Ghana's Parliament Has Passed the Anti-LGBTQ Bill. Now It Sits on Mahama's Desk.

Ghana’s parliament passed the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill on Friday, May 29, sending the country’s most aggressive anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in a decade to President John Dramani Mahama for signature. Mahama, who took office in January 2025 and has publicly committed to signing the bill if it reached him, is the only remaining institutional check before the law takes effect.

This is the second time the bill has cleared parliament. The first version, passed in February 2024 under the previous Akufo-Addo government, was never signed and lapsed when the parliamentary session ended. Mahama’s predecessors, both NPP and NDC, treated the bill as politically radioactive and let it die without action. Mahama has been explicit that he will not.

What the bill does

The Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill goes further than the colonial-era law that already criminalizes same-sex conduct in Ghana under section 104 of the criminal code. The new bill criminalizes LGBTQ+ identity itself and the broader infrastructure of LGBTQ+ life.

Under the version passed on May 29, identifying as LGBTQ+ is punishable by up to three years in prison. Promoting, sponsoring, advocating for, or funding LGBTQ+ rights or organizations carries a sentence of up to ten years. The bill would also require LGBTQ+ organizations operating in Ghana to dissolve, and it puts foreign donors, partner NGOs, and diaspora supporters in legal jeopardy if they continue to fund activity that the law treats as illegal advocacy.

The revised text adopted by parliament this month carves out some exemptions in response to international criticism of the 2024 draft. Lawyers providing legal advice or representation to LGBTQ+ people, medical professionals delivering surgical, psychological, or counselling services, and journalists reporting on LGBTQ+ issues are explicitly protected from prosecution. The carve-outs narrow the bill’s reach against specific professional sectors, but they do not change the underlying offense: existing as openly LGBTQ+ in Ghana, or advocating for those who do, becomes a criminal act.

The international architecture behind the bill

Ghana’s bill is not happening in a vacuum. The text borrows directly from the model legislation circulated across Anglophone Africa over the past five years, most prominently by US-based Christian-right organizations including the World Congress of Families and Family Watch International. The same framework underpinned Uganda’s 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act, the failed 2024 Kenyan bill, and proposed legislation in Tanzania.

The Mamba Online coverage of the May 29 vote was blunt about the timing: parliament passed the bill in the run-up to a regional Family Values Conference, an anti-rights gathering of African and American Christian-right organizations. The bill’s domestic supporters frame it as a defense of Ghanaian sovereignty against “Western homosexual propaganda” — the same vocabulary that arrives in country after country alongside the same model law. The irony, well-documented in reporting by openDemocracy and Human Rights Watch, is that the model law itself is a Western export.

What presidential assent would mean

Mahama has previously stated that marriage is between a man and a woman, that he supports the bill’s intent, and that he will sign it. There is no public indication he is reconsidering. The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association and Pan Africa ILGA have called on him to refuse assent. So have several Ghanaian civil society groups and a coalition of Western embassies in Accra.

If Mahama signs, the law takes effect on publication in the gazette. Existing LGBTQ+ organizations in Ghana — including LGBT+ Rights Ghana, which was raided and effectively shut out of public operation in 2021 — would have to formally dissolve or operate underground. People already living openly LGBTQ+ in Accra, Kumasi, or smaller cities become subject to arrest. The exemption for medical professionals means a doctor can treat an LGBTQ+ patient without prosecution, but it does not protect the patient. The exemption for journalists protects reporting on the law without protecting the people the reporting is about.

Legal challenges are already in preparation. Ghana’s Supreme Court rejected a constitutional challenge to the 2024 version, but the new bill’s expanded scope — particularly the dissolution provision for organizations and the criminalization of advocacy — opens fresh constitutional questions about freedom of association, freedom of expression, and the equal protection guarantee in Article 17 of the 1992 constitution. Activists also expect international pressure: the World Bank suspended new lending to Uganda after its Anti-Homosexuality Act passed in 2023, and several Western donors made similar warnings to Ghana during the 2024 cycle.

The cost calculus Mahama is making

The previous Akufo-Addo government quietly let the 2024 bill die in part because of those warnings. Ghana relies heavily on World Bank and IMF financing, and an estimated $3.8 billion in concessional loans were at stake during the last round. The Finance Ministry produced internal analyses arguing that the bill could cost Ghana between $600 million and $3.8 billion in disrupted financing. Those numbers have not gone away.

What has changed is the politics. Mahama campaigned on social conservatism as part of his return to power, and a meaningful portion of the NDC base — including the powerful Christian Council of Ghana and several Muslim leaders — actively supports the bill. Refusing to sign would put him in direct confrontation with constituencies he just won over.

For LGBTQ+ Ghanaians, the immediate consequence of the May 29 vote is that the legal climate is now actively dangerous, regardless of when or whether Mahama signs. The vote signals that parliament will not protect them and that institutional politics is no longer a route to safety. The next decision rests with one person, and he has been clear about what he intends to do.