World
State Department urges Ghana to protect LGBTQ rights after activists arrest
Workshop attendees taken into custody after ‘unlawful assembly’

The State Department on Monday expressed concern over the arrest of 21 LGBTQ activists in Ghana.
Ghananian police on May 20 arrested the activists in the city of Ho. A State Department spokesperson in their statement said the U.S. “promotes efforts worldwide to protect LGBTQI+ populations from violence and abuse, criminalization, discrimination, and stigma, and to empower local movements and persons seeking to advance the rights of LGBTQI+ persons.”
The spokesperson proceeded to say that the situation in Ghana is on the State Department’s radar and called upon the country’s national leaders and citizens to support and preserve the human rights of LGBTQ Ghanaians.
“We are monitoring the situation closely,” said the spokesperson. “We urge national leaders in Ghana to uphold constitutional human rights protections and to adhere to international human rights obligations and commitments for all individuals. This includes members of the LGBTQI+ community.”
“We call on all Ghanaians to respect the provisions under Ghana’s constitution that guarantee freedom of speech, expression, and peaceful assembly.”
What caused the arrests?
A training for activists and paralegals on how to advocate for LGBTQ Ghanaians and record any infringements of their human rights took place on May 20. Someone tipped off the authorities, and they arrested event detainees.
Alex Kofi Donkor, founder and director of LGBT+ Rights Ghana, told The Guardian that “the [event] was to train them on paralegal services for vulnerable groups – how we can document issues of abuse, and how best these trained paralegals can provide support.”
Authorities deemed the event an “unlawful assembly,” and they immediately arrested 16 men and five women. All were denied bail and are due to appear before a judge on June 4.
Rightify Ghana, a Ghanaian human rights group, in a series of tweets said journalists teamed up with the Ghanaian police when they descended on the event, and took people’s belongings.
“Journalists were the first to storm the place, started taking photos, took their notepads, flip charts, puller banner, books, then locked them while calling the police. The worried victims started crying for help, but today a judge has remanded the 21 queer persons #ReleaseThe21,” said Rightify Ghana.
Rightify Ghana further expressed their disappointment with the Ghanaian media’s actions as it is an entity that has fervently advocated for freedom of press in the West African nation.
“Ghanaian media, which has for decades been advocating for press freedom in Ghana, are enablers in the promotion of hate and discrimination against minority groups in the country, especially sexual minorities. No wonder Ghana is here,” said Rightify Ghana.
The activists’ arrest last week in Ho is the latest of a series of anti-LGBTQ events that have taken place in Ghana.
Ghanaian police officers earlier this year raided and shut down an LGBTQ center.
This action prompted Black celebrities in the West to urge President Nana Akufo-Addo in an open letter to work with LGBTQ community leaders. Some of the celebrities included actor Idris Elba, model Naomi Campbell, and British Vogue Editor-in-Chief Edward Enninful.
In reaction to the recent arrests, prominent human rights groups have expressed their disapproval of LGBTQ human rights abuses in Ghana.
“The arrest of LGBTIQ people holding a lawful, private gathering about protecting and supporting LGBTIQ people in Ghana is shocking, and unacceptable,” said OutRight Action International Executive Director Jessica Stern. “The basic human rights to freedom of assembly and association, enshrined in the country’s constitution, should not be limited by anti-LGBTIQ opinions of bystanders or the police.”
“Those detained should be released immediately, and an investigation into how such a blatant violation of rights could take place has to be held,” added Stern.
“I am deeply saddened that the Ghana police can act on false alarm to arrest and detain innocent citizens,” added Davis Mac-Iyalla, executive director of Interfaith Diversity Network of West Africa. “The human rights defenders arrested and jailed did nothing unlawful, they were exercising their freedom of assembly and association.”
Mac-Iyalla in his statement said “this illegal arrest is a reflection of the high level of discrimination against minorities in Ghana.”
“I call on the government to condemn the arrest and order the release of the human rights defenders,” added Mac-Iyalla. “I also call on religious leaders and all civil society locally and internationally to add their voices to this call.”
Michael K. Lavers contributed to this story.
South America
Colombia’s first leftist president takes office
Gustavo Petro has pledged to support LGBTQ, intersex rights

Former Bogotá Mayor Gustavo Petro on Sunday took office as Colombia’s first leftist president.
The former Colombian senator who was once a member of the M-19 guerrilla movement that disbanded in the 1990s, in June defeated former Bucaramanga Mayor Rodolfo Hernández in the second round of the country’s presidential election. Petro’s running mate, Francia Márquez, on Sunday took office as Colombia’s first female vice president of African descent.

Petro before his inauguration named Néstor Osuna, an openly gay man, as the country’s new justice minister.
“I am honored and thankful to President Gustavo Petro for the appointment as Colombia’s justice minister,” tweeted Osuna on Sunday. “I commit myself to working with your team to achieve the change for which so many of our compatriots yearn.”
Me siento muy honrado y agradecido con el Presidente @petrogustavo por el nombramiento como @MinjusticiaCo. Asumo el compromiso de trabajar en su equipo para lograr el cambio que anhelan tantos millones de compatriotas.
— Néstor Osuna (@osunanestor) August 7, 2022
Petro in his inaugural speech did not specifically reference LGBTQ and intersex Colombians, but OrgulloLGBT.co, the Washington Blade’s media partner in the country, published pictures that show LGBTQ and intersex people were among those who attended the inauguration.
#Historico Por primera vez vídeo Himno Oficial de la República de Colombia 🇨🇴 incluye escenas de activismo LGBTIQ 🏳️⚧️ 🏳️🌈
Imágenes quedaron en minuto 1:29 aproximadamente, fueron grabadas en #MarchaLGBTBogota https://t.co/1hux0BDRCk @MesaLGBT pic.twitter.com/ZSaUpQ06wT
— OrgulloLGBT® 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ (@OrgulloLGBT) August 8, 2022
Petro during the campaign pledged to fight violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and to implement policies “for the reaffirmation of gender and sexual orientation identities without barriers for all nonbinary and transgender people in Colombia.” Márquez noted LGBTQ and intersex Colombians after she and Petro won the election.
Wilson Castañeda, director of Caribe Afirmativo, an LGBTQ and intersex rights group in northern Colombia, told the Blade after Petro and Márquez won the election that the campaign held “various meetings” with advocacy groups. Castañeda also noted that Petro, among other things, named Tatiana Piñeros, a transgender woman, to run Bogotá’s social welfare and tourism office when he was mayor.
Castañeda and U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power are among those who attended Sunday’s inauguration that took place in Bogotá’s Bolívar Square.
“Full squares; happy faces; the flags of Colombia, Bogotá; rural, indigenous and LGBTI communities received the president and the vice president in an emotive and historic act that inaugurated the first popular and leftist Colombian government,” tweeted Bogotá Mayor Claudia López on Sunday.
López is married to Angélica Lózano, a bisexual woman who in 2018 became the first LGBTQ and intersex person elected to the Colombian Senate.
Plazas llenas, caras felices, las banderas de Colombia, Bogotá, las comunidades campesinas, indígenas y lgbti, recibieron al Presidente y la Vicepresidenta en un acto emotivo e histórico para inaugurar el primer gobierno popular y de izquierda de Colombia!#ComienzaTuGobierno pic.twitter.com/qF6Ho5bGNp
— Claudia López Hernández (@ClaudiaLopez) August 8, 2022
Lozano in March won re-election in the country’s national elections. Colombians also elected five openly LGBTQ and intersex people to the country’s House of Representatives.
Tamara Argote in March became the first non-binary person elected to the Colombian Congress.

A new law that took effect late last month in Kenya has granted equal rights and recognition to intersex people
Intersex people are now recognized as Kenya’s third gender with an ‘I’ gender marker in response to the Children Act 2022. Kenya is the first African country that has granted the intersex community this universal right.
The new law requires intersex children to be treated with dignity and have equal access to basic services like medical treatment and education, in addition to social protection services as a special need. It also requires the accomodation of intersex children in child protection centers and other facilities.
Courts are also required to consider the needs of intersex children who are on trial — including the calling of an expert witness — before they issue any ruling. The law further stipulates that anyone can be a foster parent without restrictions of gender, age or marital status.
It also protects intersex children from so-called sex normalization surgeries, and such procedures will only be done with a doctor’s recommendation. Those who violate the law will face at least three years in jail and a fine of at least $5,000.
“This is a great and major milestone globally for Kenya. We are now way ahead and can teach our neighbors and the whole globe good practices,” said Jedidah Wakonyo, a human rights lawyer and former chair of the Intersex Persons Society of Kenya.
The long journey for recognition started dramatically in 2006 when some human rights organizations petitioned courts about a detainee who had been accused of a violent robbery.
Authorities perceived the suspect was a man after police strip-searched him before he entered prison.
This followed numerous court battles by intersex people who demanded the right to recognition as another gender in their birth certificates.
Being denied birth certificates from the discriminatiory law that only recognized male and female genders further limited their access to national identity cards, passports and other crucial documents and government services.
The Births and Deaths Registration Act under the new law’s Section 7 (3) “shall take measures to ensure correct documentation and registration of intersex children at birth.”
Intersex people commonly have a combination of male and female gonads (ovaries or testicles) or ambiguous genitalia.
Wakonyo, who also chaired the Intersex Persons Implementation Coordination Committee and was named the International Court of Justice’s 2020 jurist of the year, describes the law’s enactment as a historic moment because of its comprehensive definition of an intersex person.
It defines an intersex child as “a child with a congenital condition in which the biological sex characteristics cannot be exclusively categorized in the common binary of female or male due to inherent and mixed anatomical, hormonal, gonadal or chromosomal patterns which could be apparent before, at birth, in childhood, puberty or adulthood.”
Kenyan law considers anyone under 17 to be a child.
“Defining an intersex from a child’s perspective while taking care of many aspects and not just the physical notion of being intersex is the best practice because in future they don’t find themselves in the state of gender confusion between males and females like the current situation,” stated Wakonyo.
This provision essentially protects intersex persons from being deprived of their constitutional rights of gender recognition under the country’s Bill of Rights.
Veronica Mwangi, the deputy director at Kenya’s National Commission on Human Rights, that helped secure the law’s implementation, said it addresses issues for which the intersex community has been fighting for years.
“It is very progressive and we are glad about the gains because it provides for the existence of the intersex which all state actors have to accept. Full implementation is what we now need to focus on,” she said.
The law took effect roughly five years after Kenya became the first African nation and the second country in the world after Australia to count intersex people in a Census. The 2019 survey showed 1,524 Kenyans were intersex.
Intersex rights groups had initially petitioned the courts for a total ban of surgeries on intersex children unless they were a medical emergency.
Wakonyo backs the provision for a doctor’s approval on grounds that the surgeries will only be done “in the best interest of the intersex child, informed consent of the parents and the participation of the child depending on the age.” Wakonyo and other activists say the relaxation of the requirements for adopting intersex children not only seeks to end the problem of neglect and abandonment but also the stigma that has left some to die by suicide.
The law safeguards adoptive parents’ rights and parental responsibility and intersex children from child labor, online expuse and other forms of exploitation.
“Intersex children who are just like other children will no longer be killed at birth because of their gender ambiguity,” said Wakonyo.
Despite the law’s huge benefits for the intersex community, Wakonyo notes it is a “very significant foundation” for the group because gender-specific accommodations in social gatherings and facilities remain needed.
Another historic win for intersex Kenyans this year was the Kenyan National Commission on Human Rights’ decision to hire an intersex commissioner.
“Dr. Dennis Wamalwa applied as an intersex (person), interviewed as an intersex (person), and the shortlist comprised male, female, and ‘I’ gender for intersex. He emerged (at the) top and his intersex friends and associates came to witness his swearing,” stated Wakonyo, who also served as a Kenyan National Commission on Human Rights commissioner.
Canada
Montreal Pride organizers cancel parade
A lack of security personnel prompted last-minute decision

Citing a lack of adequate security personnel, the organizers of the Fierté Montréal Pride Parade abruptly cancelled Sunday’s parade. The event organizers told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation the decision was made in collaboration with Montréal police.
CBC reported that other Pride events taking place at the Esplanade du Parc olympique from 2 p.m. local time, including the closing show with Pabllo Vittar, will go on as as planned. Tens of thousands of people were expected to attend the parade.
𝐅𝐢𝐞𝐫𝐭é 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫é𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐂𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐝: A lack of sufficient personnel to ensure security along the route has forced the organizers to cancel the event in agreement with the SPVM. Come join us at the Esplanade of the Olympic Park as of 2 p.m.
— Fierté MTL Pride (@FierteMTLPride) August 7, 2022
-
Opinions6 days ago
Monkeypox is a gay thing — we must say it
-
Opinions6 days ago
Casa Ruby folds — was money stolen?
-
Virginia7 days ago
Va. lawmaker accused of destroying neighbors’ property
-
District of Columbia7 days ago
Judge approves restraining order freezing Casa Ruby bank accounts
-
Africa2 days ago
Landmark intersex rights law takes effect in Kenya
-
Ohio7 days ago
Obergefell wins Democratic primary in Ohio legislative race
-
News5 days ago
Biden on freeing Brittney Griner: ‘I’m hopeful. We’re working very hard.’
-
LGBTQ Non-Profit Organizations6 days ago
OutRight Action International announces new executive director