LGBTQ2S+ Africans look to Canada for help as anti-gay laws expand

Anti-LGBTQ protesters stage a demonstration on the streets of the coastal city of Mombasa, Kenya, on March 17, 2023. AP Photo

MOMBASA, Kenya — Astraeus O'Levin is tired of strangers telling her they want to kill her.

In 2015, as a transgender woman, she left the scrutiny of her family in western Kenya, seeking peace and new opportunities in the tourism sector in the eastern coastal city of Mombasa.

Instead she was greeted by children pelting rocks and religious leaders using loudspeakers to blame gay people for everything from bad weather to soccer losses. Men would insult and beat her in the street, only to message her later, looking for sex.

Nine years later, Kenyan members of Parliament are debating a bill that would impose a decade-long criminal sentence for actions seeking "to advance, advocate, promote or fund homosexuality." Protests calling for the expulsion and even death of LGBTQ2S+ people in Kenya happen every few months.

"They think we are promoting pedophilia or recruiting people," O'Levin said. "We just want to feel safe."

Across the African continent, LGBTQ2S+ people are facing what Amnesty International calls a "barrage of discriminatory laws stoking hate," arbitrary arrests and "a disturbing regression of progress" on human rights.

Countries that already have laws barring gay sex are increasingly making it a criminal offence to even identify as a gender and sexual minority, while compelling parents and doctors to report when they suspect someone is gay.

With support of the R. James Travers Foreign Corresponding Fellowship, The Canadian Press spent four weeks visiting Ghana, Cameroon and Kenya to see how these trends are playing out in countries where Canada has strong ties. The series investigated what is driving this trend, and what it means for Canada's global reputation as a country with a stated feminist foreign policy and as a haven for LGBTQ2S+ refugees.

People affected by this backsliding in human rights say they're being used as a distraction from economic woes sweeping the continent. They say it's part of a broader geopolitical push against women and gender rights, fuelled by American Evangelical groups and even the Russian government.

"The battleground is in Africa, politically, socially, culturally, economically," said O'Levin.

She said things got much worse in Kenya in early 2023, when the country's supreme court affirmed the right for LGBTQ2S+ organizations to have formal registration for charity and tax purposes.

Across Kenya, organizations serving minorities reported an uptick in threats and vandalism. MP Mohammed Ali called for the mass expulsion of LGBTQ2S+ people. The Anti-LGBTQ2S+ Movement launched huge protests in Mombasa that often included calls to beat and even kill gender and sexual minorities.

That organization was ordered by a regional court in Kenya last April to stop holding demonstrations "calling on or inciting members of the public to carry out extrajudicial killing, lynching, punishing, stoning, forcible conversion, or any other means of harming LGBTQ2S+ identifying persons and their homes."

In neighbouring Uganda, courts have started hearing cases under the Anti-Homosexuality Act that took force in May 2023, which goes beyond barring specific acts to banning people from identifying as LGBTQ2S+.

The law prescribes the death penalty for certain sexual acts, and allows judges to compel people to attend what is known as conversion therapy. Landlords who "knowingly" allow their property to be used "by any person for purposes of homosexuality" could face up to seven years in jail.

Lawmakers are now proposing or enacting similar bills in a handful of other African countries.

The Toronto-based Stephen Lewis Foundation funds HIV clinics in Uganda, some of which have opted to ignore a new "duty to report acts of homosexuality" to police, opting to serve patients despite the risk of up to five years in prison.

Other clinics have closed, and UNAIDS says Uganda risks squandering its hard-fought progress toward containing HIV.

Activist Steve Kabuye said the bill has "legalized homophobia" Kabuye was stabbed in broad daylight this past January by two assailants on motorcycles. Ugandan police said the attackers were aiming for Kabuye's neck.

A video Kabuye filmed after the attack shows him on the ground writhing in pain with a deep wound to his right arm and a knife stuck in his belly. He has since fled to Canada and is waiting on a ruling for his asylum claim in Vancouver.

He said Ugandan politicians have given "a public mandate to kill gay people."

New laws in Uganda, Ghana and Kenya have followed conferences and training programs held by U.S.-based evangelical groups, which teach that western countries are introducing sexual education in schools and homosexuality in order to undermine African families.

"We see a trend of these bills being shopped around Africa," said Audrey Gadzekpo, who chairs Ghana's Center for Democratic Development.

"They sort of have lost the battle in their country, and they are bringing the battle here."

Elsewhere, lawyers are noticing tougher punishments under existing anti-gay laws.

Cameroon is among 30 African countries that jail people for homosexual acts, and lawyer Alice Nkom said judges have gone from issuing three-month suspended sentences to the full five-year punishment.

In an interview in prison, two young men serving time for being gay lament that they did not have hundreds of dollars to bribe officers to quash the charges. They've been shunned by their families, beaten by fellow prisoners and forced to clean toilets in exchange for food.

Nkom said these punishments come in spite of the African Union calling on countries to end the persecution of people on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation. She said that order counters the myth that LGBTQ2S+ people are a western concept and don't have human rights.

"These values transcend regions and skin colour. They are universal," she said.

Polling by the group Afrobarometer suggests homophobia is strongly entrenched.

This spring, 88 per cent of Kenyans polled said they wouldn't want to live near a gay person, very similar to the 84 per cent who said that in 2014. In Ghana, 91 per cent of respondents felt that way in 2022, almost the same as the 89 per cent in 2014.

"The whole continent is in crisis right now," said Caroline Kouassiaman, head of the Sankofa Initiative for West Africa.

"What's happening in Kenya and Uganda and Ghana, we're going to likely see over the next couple of years, right across the regions."

Nathalie Yamb, a Cameroonian-Swiss social-media influencer who has taken part in Kremlin events, has argued that Western countries are trying to impose lifestyles that don't reflect African cultures, and make the continent seem backwards.

Despite multiple reports of violence and oppression, Yamb claims that LGBTQ2S+ people "live their lives peacefully for the most part" in countries with colonial-era anti-sodomy laws on the books.

She said the real issue is a global gay lobby focused on "branding those who tolerate but don't promote these practices as being homophobes," Yamb said.

She took part in a July 2023 summit Russian President Vladimir Putin held with African leaders, where he declared that "traditional values form the foundation of our identity, our existence and our sovereignty."

And yet traditional healers in Ghana say their indigenous practices are being targeted by a bill aiming to stamp out LGBTQ2S+ activity. A law passed by the country's parliament but facing court challenges would ban dressing like the opposite sex, even in cultural ceremonies which involve channelling the spirit of another gender.

"Churches are now trying to tell us to do away with our culture, but tradition and culture has been there for years before Christianity came," said priestess Naa Busuafi. "They should not criminalize our culture."

Solomon Atsuvia, program officer with the organization Rightify Ghana, said the bill is a convenient distraction from Ghana's economic woes, with a jobs and affordability crisis that has many turning to religion to help them cope.

"Powerful religious voices are trying to extend and go beyond their boundaries, to influence the state with religious beliefs," Atsuvia said.

"It has become an issue of political opportunity, where major political parties are leveraging anti-LGBTQ2S+ sentiment to build their political support."

However, some LGBTQ2S+ groups are tapping into religion as a source of empowerment instead of oppression, working with the United Church of Canada to create their own church services and to push for more affirming congregations.

Meanwhile, LGBTQ2S+ activists say onerous paperwork from Canada and other western countries makes it hard to access funding needed to do public-awareness campaigns or to advocate for human rights -- particularly in French-speaking countries.

They contrast that with cash flowing with apparent ease from American evangelical groups to anti-LGBTQ2S+ organizations, as documented by human-rights organizations like the Global Philanthropy Project and openDemocracy -- and widespread speculation that Russia and Gulf countries do the same.

The recent U.S. presidential election victory of Donald Trump has people fearing even further rollbacks.

Kenyan MP Peter Kaluma, who has tabled a bill that aims to bar advocating for gay rights, praised Trump for unseating Democrat politicians who "push for homosexuality, what they call LGBTQ2S+ as human rights," he said on television network KTN, a day after the U.S. election.

Kaluma also praised American states that have restricted access to abortion, medical treatments for transgender people and school education that includes "things they call sexual rights and whatever."

O'Levin said that emboldening that mentality will only lead to more violence in Kenya and across the continent.

She used to love coming home to her neighbour's young son, whom she would spoil with candies and small games. But one day the boy ran away in fear, with visible bruises. His dad said he'd beaten his son for walking the same way as O'Levin does.

"That child will grow up to hurt people like me," she said, tearing up.

In January 2023, the body of LGBTQ2S+ activist Edwin Chiloba was found in a metal box seen being dumped on the side of a rural road in western Kenya. The story made national news, and soon high school students in Mombasa, on the other side of the country, started taunting O'Levin and at least four other friends, chanting "metal box, metal box" at them.

The situation is particularly bad for women.

In Cameroon, the Association for the Promotion of Women struggles to fund mental-health supports for women experiencing "corrective rape" for being lesbian or transgender.

"Sometimes it's in their own homes," said Arlette Nondou, a coordinator with the group.

"Sometimes it's after a night out, when they're on their way home, and they get raped in the street."

Nondou has faced violence herself, and had a child despite her own wishes due to family pressure. Her son is being raised by her older sister.

"He's the child of the family," said Nondou, with a shrug.

Many activists look to Canada for help, based on Ottawa's reputation abroad for supporting minorities.

That legacy transcends political affiliation, with Ugandan activists praising former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper for raising anti-gay policies with his Ugandan counterpart. His government also launched a refugee resettlement program focused on LGBTQ2S+ Iranians.

And yet some of Canada's work supporting minorities is under threat, with the Kenyan government blocking the resettlement of LGBTQ2S+ refugees from overcrowded camps to Canada. The Kenyan government has nearly halted the interviews needed to grant refugee status for LGBTQ2S+ people, despite outcry from Ottawa and the United Nations.

The Canadian Press reached out to the high commissions of Kenya, Cameroon and Ghana for comment, and none replied prior to publication.

Some of Canada's most senior representatives on the world stage say they regularly raise these issues with countries that hold vastly different views, in the context of human rights.

Canada's ambassador to the United Nations, Bob Rae, said it's an issue of humanity more than geopolitics.

"The Russians are trying to really use this issue as a wedge, to talk about the West versus the rest, and that somehow, gender equality and gay rights and sexual reproductive rights are somehow a product of some woke western fantasy," he said.

"It's actually not based on that at all; it's based on what it means to be a human being."

House of Commons Speaker Greg Fergus has heard some of his colleagues in Africa suggest that LGBTQ2S+ ideology is a new form of colonization. He doesn't see it that way, as the first Black Canadian to serve as Speaker.

"The colonial rebuttal won't work with me. The rights which were accorded to me and to other Black Canadians to contribute to society should be the rights afforded to anybody in society," he said.

Senator Rene Cormier, who identifies as gay, said he tries to find a modicum of common ground with legislators abroad, even those who are behind laws that criminalize LGBTQ2S+ people.

"We all agree that all citizens should have safety and access to health care," he said, but often that's as far as officials are willing to go. Cormier said most of Canada's impact seems to come through small-scale grants for local community groups.

"Canada is playing a major role," said George Lafon, a spokesman for Working for Our Wellbeing Cameroon, a group that serves LGBTQ2S+ people in the country's anglophone minority.

In parts of Cameroon that have been under civil war for several years, Canadian grants have helped Lafon's organization establish gender-based violence task forces to document and prevent physical and sexual abuse against minorities.

"They've been working closely with organizations in Cameroon even for those caught in a war zone."

Canada's top envoy in Cameroon said Ottawa is trying to work discreetly, funding programs that aim to lessen the violence until a society is ready to have a discussion about LGBTQ2S+ rights.

"Working from the ground up, it's slower, but it might be an effective way of doing things," said high commissioner Lorraine Anderson.

"We're really being careful as a diplomatic community, and thoughtful as to what's best."

In Mombasa, O'Levin said she is alarmed by how widespread anti-LGBTQ2S+ protests have become all around the world, including in Canada. She watched in dismay on social media as a march in Edmonton took place earlier this year against teaching children about transgender youth.

The attention, she said, is unsettling.

"People were used to being in the shadows," she said. "Now we are in the limelight."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 29, 2024.

This is the first story of an eight-part series investigating a backsliding of LGBTQ2S+ rights in Africa and the consequences for Canada as a country with a feminist foreign policy, which prioritizes gender equality and human dignity. The reporting in Ghana, Cameroon and Kenya was written with financial support from the R. James Travers Foreign Corresponding Fellowship.