Unenforced anti-sodomy laws as a tool against advocacy for LGBTQI+ rights in Africa

Abstract

This dissertation examines the political nature of anti-LGBTQI+ laws in the African region. Although many African countries retain these laws on the statute books, they rarely enforce them, while remaining resolute against repeal or decriminalisation. Departing from a human rights perspective, this study first investigates the frequency and modalities of enforcement, analyses the socio-political dynamics that underpin their retention, including how human rights aid conditionality and international donor relations interact with LGBTQI+ issues. It contends that the legal framework functions as a vehicle for political self-definition, permitting governments to project strength, mask weakness, and sidestep necessary socio-economic reforms. Through scapegoating the LGBTQI+ community and invoking African sovereignty against Western human rights regimes, political elites amass considerable capital. Ultimately, these laws endure as instruments of financial exploitation and harassment, while bolstering national cohesion via the symbolic exclusion of a minority deemed "un-African". Thus, they constitute potent political currency, conferring legitimacy on state authority through exclusion.