Uganda’s anti-homosexuality law: it’s time for business to speak up

There have been steady signs of progress in advancing LGBT rights over the past five years with countries decriminalising same sex relationships and some countries legalising same sex marriages. Many companies have embraced LGBT rights wholeheartedly and championed those rights in numerous countries. Our work with the UN Human Rights Office to develop guidance for companies has played a helpful role.

That’s why the latest developments in Uganda, with the passing of the ‘anti homosexuality bill’ which now awaits the President’s assent, is not only a retrograde step, not only reprehensible, not only a violation of human rights – including the right to life, privacy, and health, but it also goes against the gradual global movement towards decriminalising same-sex relationships.

And it’s why companies need to continue speaking up.

While the number of countries that criminalise private, consensual same-sex relationships is decreasing (from more than 80% of the world’s population in 1969 to about 40 percent in 2018), at 67 the number is still very high, and eleven countries still impose the death penalty.

These laws are a colonial legacy

When US Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticised the Ugandan law, saying it violated the rights of all Ugandans (besides seriously affecting the struggle against HIV/AIDS), his criticism was met by self-righteous indignation from many in Uganda and beyond, who called out the US for its ‘imperial’ or ‘colonial’ outlook. That makes sense only in a post-truth, Orwellian world.

Many of the laws that criminalise same-sex relationships originate in the dreadful S. 377 of the Indian Penal Code which was introduced in India in 1860 after Britain took over control from the East India Company following the 1857 revolt by Indian princes against the company rule. That law, along with other similar laws, reflected the colonial mindset of the time, imposing “Victorian” morality on societies Britain ruled, with scant regard to indigenous customs and cultures. Some of those changes forced a conservative, punitive norm on more liberal societies. As Dr Frank Mugisha, the courageous champion of LGBT rights in Uganda who received the 2011 Rafto Prize on behalf of Sexual Minorities in Uganda, often puts it to his audiences, “homosexuality was African; homophobia is the western or colonial import.”

In other words, it is those who are defending the Ugandan law today, who are being ‘colonial,’ and not the law’s critics, who are stressing universal laws and values.

While Britain itself has decriminalised same-sex relationships (and when she was prime minister, Theresa May deeply regretted those laws), much of the Commonwealth continues to cling to this troubling past, a point made by Human Rights Watch in a telling report, calling such laws an ‘alien legacy.’ Today, those upholding that alien legacy are claiming to be African nationalists. That’s certainly Orwellian.

When India decriminalised same-sex relationships through a Supreme Court ruling in 2018, it was a huge triumph; it significantly reduced the number of people around the world who faced criminal prosecution due to their sexual orientation. Since then, a few countries have taken similar steps, but countries such as Uganda remain outliers.

Here is where business can help

When a similar bill was put forward in 2013, companies spoke out.

Richard Branson criticised it. Barclays Bank critically discussed its implications with Ugandan officials and stressed the importance of diversity in a public statement. In 2014, the French telecom giant Orange pulled advertising from a Ugandan newspaper which ‘outed’ Ugandans as gay or lesbian, because the newspaper was encouraging mob attacks against them. When Ugandan officials asked another western company to hand over the names of its LGBT employees, it refused, citing two reasons – one, European privacy laws, and two, that it did not keep records of such information about their employees.

However, the Uganda context is especially challenging.

Between 2016 and 2017, we worked with the UN Human Rights Office on what came to be known as the ‘Standards of Conduct for Business with regard to LGBT rights’. As part of the drafting, we held consultations with business, civil society groups, and government officials in Mumbai, Kampala, Brussels, and New York, and separate smaller consultations in Australia and Brazil. There was considerable concern at the time about hosting  consultations in India and Uganda, since both countries had laws against same-sex relationships. Godrej, the leading Indian consumer products company, boldly offered their premises for us to hold the consultation.

In Uganda, the consultation had to be more discreet, with the support of a few embassies, and there was some trepidation about whether it would go ahead without an incident. (Despite being invited, a few multinational companies, which had participated in similar consultations in Europe and the US, did not send their colleagues to the consultation in Uganda, saying whether to attend or not was the employees’ choice).

In the end, we were able to go ahead, and we were gratified when a businessman who had also been a religious preacher, and ran a company that operated grocery stores, offered wholehearted support.

We were also chastened to hear from a Ugandan lesbian woman that while her employer supported her, a large majority of her colleagues protested, and said they would not want to work with her, and she had to resign. The employer felt helpless.

It’s time for business to speak up

Some corporations have challenged laws that criminalise consensual sexual relations between adults. In 2015, hundreds of American companies supported marriage equality through amicus briefs filed in the US Supreme Court, which later ruled legalising same-sex marriages. In 2019, more than 200 American companies filed amicus briefs in the US Supreme Court, supporting LGBT workers to extend federal civil rights protection from discrimination. Indian companies celebrated the Indian Supreme Court ruling that decriminalised same-sex relationships.

Businesses spoke up in 2019 when Brunei passed a law that would have imposed a harsh form of death penalty against LGBT people, and governments too urged Brunei to repeal the law. Brunei halted the law, especially after businesses in which the Brunei royal family had investments faced backlash from consumers, businesses, and institutional investors.

It is time for businesses to speak up, immediately, so that the act is neither implemented, nor enforced, and, in fact, repealed. Ugandans have fought long and hard to fight colonialism. They must get rid of this cruel law which is a colonial relic, and not part of African, or any other tradition.