‘Witch-hunt’ in Niger as military regime rounds up LGBTQ+ population

Submission statement: One of the worst declines in LGBT+ rights and access to healthcare is being carried out by Niger's military regime, an ally of Russia which is under severe pressure from jihadist insurgents of IS and JNIM for the control of its national territory.

The Nigerien junta adopted in June one of the most repressive laws against LGBT+ people on the continent, enforcing up to 10 years of imprisonment for consensual same-sex relationships, and up to 20 years for organizing, celebrating or attending a same-sex "marriage ceremony", and for funding, presiding or participating in associations or clubs "promoting unnatural acts" – including homosexuality but also "asexual acts".

The law is part of a broader continental wave of repression agasint LGBT+ Africans, pushed by widespread homophobia, social conservatism and religious revival, as well as foreign lobbies. In the past decade, anti-LGBT+ laws and bills have been proposed and adopted in Ghana, Senegal, Uganda, Kenya and Burkina Faso, enforcing severe legal punishments up to the death penalty in Uganda.

The legislation quickly translated into action as Niger's military ruler Abdourrahamane Tchiani, who took power in 2023 by overthrowing the Western-aligned democratically elected president Mohamed Bazoum, heralded the law as a way for Niger to assert "anti-imperialism", castigating homosexuality as a foreign practice imposed by the West, similarly to its neighbor and fellow military regime of Burkina Faso.

At least 40 men, including high-ranking members of the administration and military, have been arrested and disappeared since the law was enacted. Organizations which provide healthcare that could be linked to "unnatural acts", such as condoms, PreP or HIV tests had to stop providing these services out of fear of being hounded by the Nigerien authorities.

Humanitarian workers have warned that such policies endangered the wider Nigerien population, already affected by widespread extreme poverty, lack of sanitation and access to healthcare, by deterring HIV prevention and monitoring, risking another outburst of the epidemic that has disproportionally affected Subsaharan Africa.