The global lender halted new payments to Uganda last year over the country’s anti-homosexuality law
The World Bank has said it is working with Uganda to resume funding to the East African nation, following a year-long halt in response to the passage of an anti-LGBTQ law. Local and international gay rights activists are opposing the global lender’s latest move, calling it “disastrous.”
Bloomberg cited a spokesperson for the Washington-based financing body on Thursday, stating that measures are being put in place to ensure that members of the LGBTQ community benefit equally from projects.
The measures reportedly include an independent monitoring mechanism to ensure compliance and would apply to both ongoing and new projects.
The Ugandan government came under widespread condemnation from the West after it enacted the Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA) in May last year. The US government imposed visa restrictions on sponsors of the law and threatened further action against officials responsible for the measures.
The World Bank responded by halting new loans for Kampala, saying the legislation, which imposes the death penalty for certain same-sex acts and a 20-year prison sentence for promoting homosexuality, contradicted its “non-discrimination” values.
The country’s president, Yoweri Museveni, called the decision “unfortunate” and accused the global financing institution of attempting to force Uganda into abandoning its principles and sovereignty. He vowed that his country would “develop with or without loans,” declaring that Africans do not need “pressure from anybody” to solve their problems.
The World Bank had previously stated that extra steps were required to guarantee that project implementation in Uganda adhered to the bank’s environmental and social guidelines.
“We will not propose any new public financing for Uganda to our board until we are satisfied that additional mitigation measures are in place,” Bloomberg quoted an email from the unnamed World Bank spokesperson as saying on Thursday.
“These mitigation measures have been designed to ensure beneficiaries of bank-financed projects are not discriminated against and receive equal access to services,” the official stated.
However, a group consisting of over 100 civil society organizations has sent an open letter to World Bank President Ajay Banga, urging him to maintain the funding freeze on Kampala as long as the anti-gay law remains in force.
“We are concerned that the World Bank’s mitigation measures are gravely flawed both in structure and substance and that implementing them will be a setback in the fight for non-discrimination not only in Uganda but more generally around the world,” the group stated.
“Restarting lending to a country that is flagrantly and continuously violating the rights of vulnerable people on the basis of this package of appallingly weak measures will go down in history as a green light for not only the discrimination of Ugandans, but also for enabling government embrace of discriminatory policies and laws globally,” it added.
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