Belgium has expressed concerns over the Anti-Homosexuality Bill currently before Uganda’s Parliament, Chimp Corps report.
During her working visit to Uganda, Caroline Gennez, Belgium’s Minister of Development Cooperation said “such a bill being tabled again is obviously worrying.”
Minister Gennez further confirmed that “Belgian development cooperation and foreign policy will not tolerate any restrictions on inclusiveness or human rights.”
The projects and programmes of the Bilateral Belgian Cooperation in Uganda focus on secondary technical and professional education and on primary healthcare. The total budget of the current programme amounts to 69 million Euro.
Belgium also supports 11 Belgian Non-Governmental Actors (NGAs) working in Uganda, with a total budget of 23 million euro (2017-2021).
Uganda lawmakers say the object of the Bill is to establish comprehensive and enhanced legislation to protect the traditional family by prohibiting sexual relations and marriage between persons of the same sex.
The Bill also seeks to protect children and youth who are made vulnerable to sexual abuse through homosexuality and related acts.
A similar bill was already voted on in 2014 but subsequently suspended by the Constitutional Court.
Several Western human rights groups have since opposed the bill, saying it violates the rights of minority groups.
Minister Gennez, who was in Kampala to evaluate the results of the Belgian international cooperation programme in Uganda, concluded her working visit to Uganda on Friday 17 March with a round table on human rights.
“Our investments for better education and health care will only pay off if the rule of law, human rights and democracy are also supported,” said Gennez.
“That is why, in addition to the visits to our social and sustainable projects in schools and hospitals, we also addressed the government of Uganda about women’s rights and protecting the LGBTQIA+ community,” she said, adding, “There can be no discrimination in our development cooperation – we leave no one behind.”
Gennez said “criminalising the LGBT+ community is unacceptable to us. We have clearly communicated that message to the Ugandan government. The human rights organizations in Uganda can continue to count on our support.”
During a meeting with the Ugandan Minister of Finance, Matia Kasaija, who oversees cooperation with Belgium, Minister Gennez also made it clear that respect for the rights of women and the LGBTQ+ community is central to all projects supported by Belgian development cooperation.
She added: “With this law, the LGBTQ+ community would be completely excluded from Ugandan society. We therefore condemn the bill in the strictest terms and ask the Ugandan government not to adopt it.”
The Minister said passing the bill risks hitting the most vulnerable the hardest.
“HIV patients would no longer have access to medical care due to their association with the LGBTQ+ community. This law also only leads to more exclusion in education. And that while only a quarter of the children follow secondary education. Moreover, several international companies operating in Uganda have already indicated that there will be economic consequences if the Ugandan government cannot guarantee that their LGBTQ+ employees can perform their jobs safely and with respect for their privacy,” emphasised Minister Gennez.
Belgium is mooting a future bilateral programme that would specifically focus on access to education and health care, social protection, climate change, human rights and democracy (2023-2028).
A new programme would rest on three pillars: access to health and education (with a particular focus on girls and women) as the basis of social protection, climate change and its impact on agriculture and communities and, finally, human rights and democracy.
Belgian development cooperation ollows the Agenda2030 including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their underlying principle of inclusiveness – under the motto “leaving no one behind”.
Uganda has also endorsed the Agenda2030. Enabel, which implements bilateral Belgian international cooperation on the ground, works with a results-based financing: projects must meet pre-agreed criteria in order to obtain anticipated funding in full or in part.
May I kindly request Caroline Gennez, the Belgium’s Minister of Development Cooperation and foreign policy that Ugandans have they cultural values that should be respected like we respect your cultural values. Please do not impose on us what you consider normal in your country. The sexual organs we have are reproduction while the anus is for removing feaces from our body. May the other creatures on earth such as the animals and birds think better compared to some of us the human being because they do not go fucking in the wrong place.
Why you don’t have translated in Swahili????