World Bank to Add Safeguards for LGBTQ+ in Uganda

The World Bank is going to add safeguards for LGBTQ+ Ugandans before resuming funding in Uganda. These safeguards include preventing discrimination against LGBTQ+ Ugandans and ensuring that employees who help LGBTQ+ patrons will not be arrested.

World Bank regional vice-president for East and Southern Africa, Victoria Kwakwa, says on this note, “We’re doing all this to clarify this is not what you should be doing in World Bank-financed projects, and to say you are allowed to do it the right way and you will not be arrested.” The project has also been discussed with the government.

Back in August, the World Bank’s funding was halted in Uganda due to an anti-LGBTQ+ law that had been passed. The law outlawed certain sexual acts on penalty of a life sentence or the death penalty and directly targets businesses owned by LGBTQ+ individuals and organizations. Unsurprisingly, there is a clause that encourages the courts to sentence LGBTQ+ individuals to conversion therapy, which has been known to do nothing but traumatize those who go through it, both physically and mentally.

The law also criminalizes “facilitating the commission of the offense of homosexuality,” a clause that is purposefully vague in order to convict those who support, house, employ, or serve LGBTQ+ individuals and sentence them to up to seven years in prison.

The anti-LGBTQ+ law has been openly condemned internationally, with the U.S. government, the Equal Rights Coalition, the United Nations, the European Union, the Canadian government, the German Foreign Office, Conveying with Equality, and the World Bank itself all coming forward via statements and social media posts to denounce this decision. The law has allegedly caused a massive rise in discrimination and hate crimes against LGBTQ+ individuals, most commonly among private individuals as opposed to businesses. LGBTQ+ Ugandans were already an incredibly marginalized group and faced high rates of discrimination to begin with.