Former Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama from the opposition National Democratic Congress has won Saturday’s general elections, defeating current Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia of the New Patriotic Party.

The NDC before the election had pledged its support for the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, which would further criminalize LGBTQ people and those who support them.

The bill, which MPs approved in February, has yet to be signed by outgoing President Nana Akufo-Addo because of a ruling the Supreme Court is expected to issue on Dec. 18. Richard Dela Sky, a journalist and private lawyer, challenged the law in March.

The NDC, NPP and other parties used recognition of LGBTQ rights to persuade Ghanaians to vote for them. Mahama during a BBC interview last week said LGBTQ rights are against African culture and religious doctrine.

Berinyuy Hans Burinyuy, LGBT+ Rights Ghana’s director for communications, said homophobic attacks and public demonstrations increased during the campaign.

“The passage of the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill into law will institutionalize State-sanctioned discrimination and violence against LGBTQ+ individuals, leaving little to no legal recourse for those affected,” said Burinyuy. “The climate of fear and uncertainty that has gripped Ghana’s LGBTQ+ community cannot be overstated.”

“While the political atmosphere remains hostile, there is still hope that the Supreme Court will rule in favor of human rights and constitutional protections,” added Burinyuy. “Should the court strike down the bill, it will be a significant victory for LGBTQ+ rights and a blow to the growing wave of homophobia that has swept the country.”

Awo Dufie, an intersex person and cross-dresser, said the LGBTQ community is going to be at increased risk under the NDC-led government because it supports anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.

“Mahama supported the anti-LGBT bill as well as the arrest and prosecution of human rights defenders,” noted Dufie. “Politicizing queer rights as a distraction actually started under Atta Mills (the-late president of Ghana) and the NDC government in 2011, and it was an NDC MP (Sam George) who furthered this in 2021 vocalizing support for the anti-LGBT bill.”

Dufie added Ghanaians “voted out a worse corrupt government who had no respect for human rights, and brought in a former corrupt president who has also promised to not respect human rights.”

Activism Ghana, another LGBTQ rights group, said the attacks against LGBTQ Ghanaians are a series of political ploys designed to win votes as opposed to accelerating development.

“Hate the gays, win the votes, and when they win and fail to deliver development and prosperity, they scapegoat the gays to take away attention from real problems,” said Activism Ghana.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday congratulated Mahama’s election, and noted Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang will become the country’s first female vice president.

“The United States commends the Electoral Commission, its hundreds of thousands of poll workers, civil society, and the country’s security forces, who helped ensure a peaceful and transparent process,” said Blinken in a statement. “We also applaud Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia for his gracious acceptance of the results.”

Mahama’s inauguration will take place on Jan. 7.

Advocacy groups continue to urge Akufo-Addo to veto the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill or amend sections that further criminalize LGBTQ people and allies.

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation on Tuesday announced it has awarded grants to 18 LGBTQ rights groups around the world.

A press release notes the groups will receive up to $5,000 through its Global Small Grants program. The recipients include:

• LighT in Central Asia

• Más Igualdad Perú

• The Eastern Caribbean Alliance for Diversity and Equality

• XY Spectrum in Serbia

• Lesbian Intersex Trans and Other Extensions in Malawi

• Right Side Human Rights Defender NGO in Armenia

• The Blue Diamond Society in Nepal

• The Barbados LGBTQ+ Coalition

• Sin Etiquetas +593 in Ecuador

• Icebreakers Uganda

• Equal Ground in Sri Lanka

• The Equal Asia Foundation in Thailand

• The Taiwan Tongzhi (LGBTQ+) Hotline Association

• Key Watch Ghana

• South Trans Voice in Morocco

The press release notes this year’s grant priorities included “projects centering LGBTQI+ people who are racial, religious or ethnic minorities, have a disability, communities disproportionately impacted by climate change, or who have experienced displacement.” The HRC Foundation also “sought to assist programs working to focus on increasing trans and/or intersex leadership or advocacy and those generally creating more inclusive access to services or other institutions of daily life, including engaging employers/businesses or faith institutions as allies for equality.”

Sean Sih-Cheng Du of the Taiwan Tongzhi (LGBTQ+ Hotline Association said the grant will allow his organization to expand its campaign that seeks to make “workplaces in Taiwan more diverse and inclusive.”

HRC launched the Global Small Grants Program in 2020.

Tuesday’s announcement coincides with International Human Rights Day, which commemorates the U.N. General Assembly’s ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Dec. 10, 1948.

President-elect Donald Trump’s election last month sparked concern among LGBTQ activists and advocacy groups in the U.S. and around the world. The incoming president has nominated U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) to serve as his administration’s secretary of state and U.S. ambassador to the U.N. respectively.

Former Bogotá Mayor Claudia López on Saturday did not specifically discuss the growing speculation over whether she will run for president of Colombia in 2026 when she spoke at the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute’s annual International LGBTQ Leaders Conference in D.C. and with the Washington Blade.

“In a week I am going to return to Colombia and I’m coming back with a very, very punctual task,” she said in a speech she gave after the Victory Institute inducted her into its LGBTQ+ Political Hall of Fame at the JW Marriott. “Democracy in the world in general needs emotional reconnection.”

López, 54, was a student protest movement leader, journalist, and political scientist before she entered politics.

She returned to Colombia in 2013 after she earned her PhD in political science at Columbia University.

López in her speech said Juan Francisco “Kiko” Gomez, a former governor of La Guajíra Department in northern Colombia, threatened to assassinate her because she wrote about his ties to criminal gangs. A Bogotá judge in 2017 convicted Gómez of ordering members of a paramilitary group to kill former Barrancas Mayor Yandra Brito, her husband, and bodyguard and sentenced him to 55 years in prison.

López in 2014 returned to Colombia, and ran for the country’s Senate as a member of the center-left Green Alliance party after she recovered from breast cancer. López won after a 10-week campaign that cost $80,000.

“I was the only woman, the only LGBTQ member of my caucus,” she said in her speech. “Of course I had the honor, but also the responsibility to represent them particularly well, [and] of course all the citizens who trust me and all the citizens of Colombia.”

“Once you are elected, you are elected to represent equally and faithfully all of the people, not only your own people,” added López.

López in 2018 was her party’s candidate to succeed then-President Juan Manuel Santos when he left office. López in 2019 became the first woman and first lesbian elected mayor of Bogotá, the Colombian capital and the country’s largest city.

“This of course speaks incredibly well of my city,” she said in her speech.

López took office on Jan. 1, 2020, less than a month after she married her wife, Colombian Sen. Angélica Lozano. (López was not out when she was elected to the Senate.) Lozano was with López at the Victory Institute conference.

López’s term ended on Dec. 31, 2023. She will return to Colombia once her Advanced Leadership Fellowship at Harvard University ends this month.

“I ended my mayorship,” López told the Blade. “It has been, of course, the honor of my life to be the first female mayor of my city. It was an absolutely beautiful job, but very challenging.”

“I needed a year of rest, of relaxation, and I was fortunate to receive a Harvard scholarship this year,” she added.

López during the interview called for an end to polarization and reiterated her support for democracy.

“We need to listen to each other again, we need to have a coffee with each other again, we need to touch each other’s skin,” she said.

López said parties, candidates, and their political coalitions in Colombia and around the world need to “listen, reconnect, and organize with people” at the grassroots. López also told the Blade there is a “global crisis of democracy.”

“Each country has its own contexts and challenges, but it seems to me that there is a common element there,” she said.

“So, I return to Colombia rested, grateful after a year of reflection, with proposals in mind, but determined to dedicate time to what I consider the most important work for democracy at this time, which is to reconnect from the grassroots,” added López.

‘I know what love and education can do for any person’

López took office less than three months before the COVID-19 pandemic began.

“We were full of hope, ready to go to offer a new social and environmental contract for Bogotá society for the 21st century,” she said. “But a couple of (months) after being sworn into office, the pandemic of COVID-19 came.”

Unemployment and poverty rates soared in Bogotá during the pandemic, and the city’s residents had less access to health care and other basic services.

López noted her administration in response to the pandemic offered scholarships to young people, supported businesses, and increased funding of the city’s social services. López also said her administration implemented Latin America’s first city-based care system for female care givers, and build three more LGBTQ community centers in poor and working-class neighborhoods.

“I know what love and education can do for any person,” she said.

The U.N. Refugee Agency says upwards of three million Venezuelans are now in Colombia.

Then-Colombian President Iván Duque in February 2021 announced Venezuelan migrants who register with the country’s government will be legally recognized.

Former Bogotá Mayor Gustavo Petro, a former senator who was once a member of the M-19 guerrilla movement that disbanded in the 1990s, succeeded Duque as president on Aug. 7, 2022. Colombia and Venezuela restored diplomatic ties less than a month later.

Venezuela’s National Electoral Council on July 28 declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner of the country’s disputed presidential election. Tamara Adrián, the country’s first transgender congresswoman who ran in the presidential primary earlier this year, are among those who denounced voting irregularities.

WPLG, a South Florida television station, on March 16, 2021, reported López sparked controversy after she told reporters there have been “some very violent acts from Venezuelans.”

“First they murder, and then they steal,” she said. “We need guarantees for Colombians.”

López made the comments after a Venezuelan migrant murdered a Colombian police officer in Bogotá.

“The problem is not migration from Venezuela,” López told the Blade in response to a question about Venezuela. “The problem is authoritarianism in Venezuela and you have to keep the focus on it.”

“The problem is what it is: It is not the migrants, it is in Maduro, it is in the dictatorship, it is in authoritarianism.”

More than 200,000 people died in the war between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia that began in 1962.

Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia Commander Rodrigo “Timochenko” Londoño on Sept 26, 2016, signed an LGBTQ-inclusive peace agreement. Colombian voters a few days later narrowly rejected it a referendum that took place against the backdrop of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric from religious and conservative groups.

Santos and Londoño less than two months later signed a second peace agreement, which also contains LGBTQ-specific references.

López described herself as “a person totally committed to the peace process.” She added, however, she has “a bit of a bad taste in my mouth now that I look back.”

“The peace process with the FARC, which was to demobilize the FARC, period, certainly tried to have and had a gender focus, of course a diversity focus, a focus on human rights for all victims, and certainly (the) many LGBT victims who had been victims of FARC recruitment, abuse, stigmatization, etc.,” López told the Blade. “So, in some sense, or in many senses, having that gender and diversity perspective was a way of recognizing the victims of our community.”

She noted opponents lied about the LGBTQ-specific provisions “to deceive and delegitimize the peace agreement.”

“It is not about making anything invisible, or even downplaying anything, but rather about being much more strategic in understanding that we do not want our flags and causes to be exposed in a way that ends up being a boomerang for our own community,” López added. “So, I say that is why it is a disappointment, because I think it is a lesson. At least for me, it made me think and it makes me think, and I have said it openly since then, that we have to be much more careful and much more, above all, strategic, in how we raise our flags so that they really do not only have symbolic, but real advances and so that in no case do they become a boomerang against ourselves.”

‘I know how you feel’

López during the interview praised the recent elections of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, Uruguayan Vice President Beatriz Argimón, and other women in Latin America. She also expressed sympathy with LGBTQ Americans who are concerned about the incoming Trump-Vance administration.

“I know how you feel,” said López in her speech. “I’ve been there when we lost the peace referendum in 2016. I’ve been there when three candidates who represented independent, new alternatives in Colombia, and policies were killed by mafia groups in 1990. I’ve been there when a mafia cartel was able to fund and elect a president for all of us. I’ve been there when paramilitary groups were able to support and elect another president in Colombia.”

“I know how obscure and difficult and challenging and painful democratic times are, but we cannot (back) democracy only when we win,” she added. “It’s precisely when things are challenging, when we suffer defeats that are painful, that we need to attach to our democratic and humanistic values and principles.”