One country at a time

Ghana has abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes:

Ghana has become the 29th country in Africa to abolish the death penalty in a move hailed by human rights activists.

The decision means that the 176 people currently on death row, including six women, are likely to have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment.

On Tuesday, Ghana’s parliament voted to amend the country’s criminal offences act, removing the use of capital punishment for crimes including murder, genocide, piracy and smuggling.

The death sentence can still be given for acts of high treason, and campaigners cautioned that the country’s constitution would have to change for a complete removal of the penalty.

And hopefully that will happen soon. But this takes capital punishment off the table in almost all circumstances, and it is something to be welcomed.

Ghana moves to arrest all gays

Yes, really

Ghana’s Western Region Minister, Paul Evans Aidoo MP has ordered the immediate arrest of all homosexuals in the country’s west.

Aidooo has tasked Ghana’s Bureau of National Investigations and security forces to round up the country’s gay population and has called on landlords and tenants to inform on people they suspect of being homosexuals.

“All efforts are being made to get rid of these people in the society,” he said.

Its unclear at this stage whether there have in fact been any arrests, or whether it is just a government Minister using his position to spew homophobia. But its a horrifying prospect. Contrary to the Minister, its not actually against the law in Ghana to be gay. It is against the law to engage in "unnatural carnal knowledge" (which is defined in exclusively male terms; lesbians are fine), but that's pretty obviously not the same thing.

Sadly, Ghana's constitution and legal system do not protect against this sort of systematic oppression. Neither does international law. Even if he started rounding up gays, putting them in camps, and murdering them, he'd still be fine, because current international law protects only "national, ethnical, racial or religious" groups (Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide) or "political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, [and] gender" groups (Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court). Sexual orientation is not a protected characteristic, and persecuting or even murdering people because of it is not yet illegal in international law. This is something that we have to change.