Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s
authorisation of the Parliament’s so-called “kill the gays” bill has led
Washington officials to announce a review of U.S. aid to the African country.
While the new law no longer provides
the death penalty for LGBT people, as it did when parliament first introduced
it, it escalates existing penalties on homosexuality, allowing the state to
imprison people for life if they engage in “aggravated homosexuality,” defined
as repeated instances of gay sex between consenting adults or acts involving
minors, disabled, or HIV-positive people.
The European Union, the United Nations
and the Catholic Church have all strongly condemned the new law, which
escalates existing penalties for homosexuality.
“Now that this law has been enacted,
we are beginning an internal review of our relationship with the Government of
Uganda to ensure that all dimensions of our engagement, including assistance
programmes, uphold our anti-discrimination policies and principles and reflect
our values,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced Monday.
Some European countries, including
Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands, have already halted financial aid to
Uganda in protest, while others, like Austria and Sweden, are similarly
reviewing their aid commitments. Prominent U.S. policymakers are calling on the
United States to temporarily cut off the 456.3 million dollars in aid to Uganda
that Congress has appropriated for the coming fiscal year.
“We need to closely review all U.S.
assistance to Uganda, including through the World Bank and other multilateral
organisations,” U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy said Tuesday. “I cannot support
providing further funding to the Government of Uganda until the United States
has undergone a review of our relationship.”
Ugandan health and sanitation
programmes in particular rely on foreign aid support, especially when it comes
to combating HIV/AIDS. Uganda has an HIV prevalence rate of 7.2 percent, a rate
that is roughly doubled for men who have sex with men.
“We are also deeply concerned about
the law’s potential to set back public health efforts in Uganda,” Kerry said,
“including those to address HIV/AIDS, which must be conducted in a
non-discriminatory manner in order to be effective.”
As the new Ugandan law prosecutes
organisations aiding LGBT individuals, a high-risk group for HIV transmission,
Uganda’s actions could have an adverse affect on Ugandan organisations that
partner with and receive funding from PEPFAR, the United States’ flagship
anti-AIDS programme.
“From a purely operation standpoint …
we know that the law itself has specific ramifications for PEPFAR assistance,”
Timi Gerson, the director of advocacy for American Jewish World Service (AJWS),
a development organisation with operations in Uganda, told IPS. “They’re going
to have to look at how this law is going to impact its ability to run those
programmes.”
Gerson is hesitant about freezing all
aid to Uganda, however.
“AJWS doesn’t support the cutting of
fundamental aid to those countries. We don’t support stopping aid to ordinary
Ugandans,” she said.
“I wouldn’t talk about cutting aid, I
would talk about shifting aid. I think the real question is how you would do that
on the ground in light of the situation, so that has to be first and foremost
in the [U.S.] review.”
U.S. evangelical influence
Some pro-LGBT advocates are more
ambivalent about U.S. aid funding in Uganda, however. They point to an
unacceptable trend of U.S. funding being administered by socially conservative
Christian groups that have long espoused an anti-LGBT agenda, creating an
environment where anti-LGBT legislation enjoys widespread support.
U.S. funding often ends up in the
hands of conservative religious groups via a complex system of grants,
sub-grants and further sub-grants awarded by sub-grantees.
“[The conservatives] are doing a lot
of excellent work when it comes to services like orphanages and very good,
well-funded schools,” Rev. Kapya Kaoma of Political Research Associates, a
social justice advocacy group, told IPS.
“The conservative schools have very
good libraries, unlike other schools, but have books that present a
conservative angle regarding Ugandan politics. That is an advantage for them.”
Kaoma noted that organisations headed
by people like Martin Ssempa, a vehemently anti-LGBT Ugandan pastor, have
received 60,000 dollars in sub-grants from organisations receiving U.S. PEPFAR
funds. (Ssempa also opposes the use of condoms.)
“I hear these calls to suspend aid and
I am conflicted about that,” said Kaoma. “I don’t think that’s the best way to
go, as suspending aid only hurts the poor and not the rich. Museveni won’t lose
a single thing.”
Instead, he advocates sanctions on
Ugandan individuals responsible for the law – and on U.S. evangelicals who he
says have fuelled Uganda’s anti-LGBT movement.
“The alternative is selective
sanctioning targeting the people who are responsible, all the anti-gay
speakers,” he said.
“If they can be sanctioned, there can
be a law that says no money can move from any U.S. organisation to an
[anti-LGBT] group in Uganda – then they will start feeling the pinch. If they
cut aid, it could just increase hatred against LGBT people as retaliation.”
Kaoma said that he is particularly
eager to prevent certain individuals from entering Uganda. He lists prominent
U.S. evangelicals such as Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundidge, Don Schmierer and
Lou Engle as having directly influenced Uganda’s anti-LGBT law.
In March 2009, Lively held a
conference for Ugandan political, clerical and civic elites, where he spoke to
them about the “gay agenda”. Lively claimed that gays were responsible for the
Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide, and asserted that they were now targeting Uganda
by trying to “convert” Ugandan children.
Kaoma attended and filmed the 2009
conference, featuring Lively, Brundidge and Schmierer. A week later, Ugandan
parliamentarians circulated the first draft of recently enacted law.
“The original bill reads like Scott
Lively speaking again,” Kaoma said.
The Centre for Constitutional Rights,
a U.S.-based watchdog, is currently representing Sexual Minorities Uganda, a
Ugandan LGBT advocacy group, as it sues Lively in a U.S. court for his alleged
influence on the legislation.
Lively has conducted similar anti-LGBT
activism throughout Africa as well as in Ukraine and Russia.
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