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Escalating Threats to LGBTQ People in Senegal: Legal Reform, Moral Panic, and the Devastating Consequences to Public Health and Human Rights.
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March 18, 2026
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Senegal has maintained a legal framework criminalizing same-sex intimacy since the colonial era. Article 319 of the Penal Code, derived from the French Penal Code of 1810 and retained at independence, has long served as the primary instrument for the prosecution of consensual same-sex acts between adults. Under the existing provision, conviction carries a sentence of one to five years' imprisonment and a fine of 100,000 to 1,500,000 CFA francs.
On March 11, 2026, Senegal's parliament adopted a bill to amend Article 319 of the Penal Code. The proposed amendment more than doubles the minimum sentence, raising penalties to five to ten years' imprisonment and fines payable of 2,000,000 to 10,000,000 CFA francs. It extends the criminalization of same-sex intimacy by introducing the punishment of the “promotion” of sexual and gender diversity and effectively criticizing the funding and support of any groups that advocate for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer people
This measure is the most recent in a wave of efforts to toughen existing laws against same-sex relations in Senegal. In 2024, a member of parliament introduced a legislative proposal to expressly criminalize “homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, transsexuality” alongside “necrophilia and zoophilia”, with prison terms between 10 and 15 years and a fine payable of 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 CFA francs. It was the second such bill reported during that legislative session; however, neither was moved toward adoption. During the 2024 election campaign, a trans man interviewed by Outright described the now ruling party, PASTEF, as “categorically homophobic.” In May 2025, an Islamic coalition of anti-gender groups, And Samm Jikko Yi, organized public anti-homosexuality protests in the nation’s capital of Dakar. At that time, government spokesperson Amadou Moustapha Ndiekk Sarré clarified that legislators had begun consulting with religious and faith leaders, and intended to introduce stringent penalties in response to the public call for further criminalization of homosexual conduct.
Recent Arrests and Public Protests
The introduction of the bill comes in the backdrop of increased arrests on charges of same-sex conduct, mostly targeting men. In February 2026, 12 men, including two Senegalese public figures, media presenter Pape Chinch Diallo and musician Djiby Dramé, were arrested and charged with criminal conspiracy, unnatural acts, deliberate transmission of HIV/AIDS through unprotected sex, and endangering the lives of others, contrary to Article 319 of the Penal Code and Article 36 of Law No. 2010-03 of 9 April 2010 on HIV and AIDS. The individuals underwent forced HIV testing, and their HIV status was made public on the social media pages of the National Gendarmerie of Senegal. These recent arrests follow reports of a similar mass arrest in October 2025 at a gathering in a private residence in Dakar. Police reported that 16 men present were charged under Article 319, while a woman was charged with failure to register as a sex worker.
These cases drew extensive media coverage, which in turn ignited a fresh wave of public demonstrations condemning homosexuality as well as the alleged deliberate transmission of HIV. At these protests, placards bearing charged messages such as "no to homosexuality" and "stop child abuse" made visible the extent to which views regarding homosexuality had become entangled with stigma around HIV and broader moral outrage. This conflation has since taken firm root across mainstream Senegalese media, where three distinct issues – homosexuality, child safety, and HIV transmission –have been woven into a single, dangerous narrative of moral panic.
This uptake in mass arrests and subsequent negative media coverage within the country has fueled hostility against LGBTQ people and community action calling for harsher penalties. And Samm Jikko Yi collective publicly called for the National Assembly to vote on the law criminalizing homosexuality, which was passed on March 11, 2026.
Reactions of Senegal Authorities
Senegal's National AIDS Council, the CNLS, has issued public warnings that are clear on their position: prosecutions linked to HIV status risk dismantling the country's hard-won progress on testing and treatment uptake. Among those recently arrested are people living with HIV, including peer educators whose work is safeguarding public health care by maintaining these communities' connections to testing, treatment, and care. Many LGBTQ people are already avoiding health facilities. A number of LGBTQ community leaders have fled the country due to safety and security concerns amidst the crackdown. The infrastructure of peer support that allows HIV prevention and treatment to reach key populations, which took years to build, is collapsing in real time as a result of the threats posed by religious extremists and state actors.
Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko has publicly criticized the circulation by Jamra, an Islamic NGO, of “lists of alleged homosexuals, including references to their alleged HIV status,” calling it a human rights violation. However, it is difficult to reconcile that statement with evidence of a legislative agenda that actively increases the vulnerability of those same individuals by driving them from clinics, from community support networks, and from any hope of legal protection. A state cannot simultaneously claim to protect human rights and legislate the erasure of its own citizens.
Extension of Proposed Criminalization in Article 319
The proposed amendment to Article 319 extends criminalization beyond same-sex acts, also including the “promotion” of “homosexuality, bisexuality, and transsexuality” as well as funding and support for any groups that promote or “glorify” these identities. This provision is sweeping and vague. It could and almost certainly will be used to shut down civil society organizations, prosecute journalists and social media influencers, silence health care workers, and criminalize international development assistance. Health sector organizations have reportedly been told they may be exempt, but an exemption negotiated under political pressure is not a legal safeguard. It is a concession that can be withdrawn at any point in time.
What is happening in Senegal cannot be read in isolation. In February 2024, Ghana’s parliament passed the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill 2023, which lapsed when parliament was dissolved before the December 2024 elections. MPs reintroduced this bill in March 2025 and again in February 2026, and it is moving through the legislative process. This law targets individuals for openly identifying as LGBTQ or even as an ally, and prohibits the promotion, advocacy, and funding of LGBTQ-related activities. In December 2024, in Mali, the military junta's National Transitional Council enacted a law that prohibits consensual same-sex sexual activity between both men and women and the “promotion” of same-sex conduct. In March 2025, Niger explicitly outlawed consensual same-sex sexual acts between adults under Article 25 of the Charter of Refoundation, adopted by the military junta almost two years after seizing power in July 2023. In August 2025, Burkina Faso's military junta amended the Persons and Family Code, criminalizing the promotion of homosexual practices using language strikingly similar to Senegal's amendment to Article 319: broad, vague, and deliberately designed to reach beyond intimate conduct into civil society, health care, and advocacy. It is important to note that neither Mali, Niger, nor Burkina Faso previously criminalized consensual same-sex conduct.
The pattern is not coincidental. Introduction and enactment of legislation attacking sexual and gender minorities is being deployed across the region, in countries like Uganda and Kenya, as an instrument of authoritarian consolidation, as a way to perform cultural nationalism. This has been seen in the courtrooms of Malawi and Ghana, where this rhetoric has been used to deflect from governance failures, and ultimately silences the civil society organizations best positioned to hold governments to account.
Senegal's three-pronged structure of amendment, with its escalated criminal penalties for same-sex intimacy and trans identity and its sweeping criminalization of advocacy, support, and funding for LGBTQ issues, is designed not merely to prohibit same-sex conduct but to eliminate the legal, civic, and health care infrastructure within which LGBTQ people in Senegal currently live and organize.
The passage of the Amendment by the National Assembly has brought into question how Senegalese lawmakers uphold the international commitments made by the State. Senegal is a signatory to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and numerous instruments that affirm the rights to dignity, privacy, health, and equality before the law. These are commitments made by the Senegalese government to the Senegalese people and to the world. The amendment to Article 319 is incompatible with those commitments. It violates the right to privacy. It violates the principle of proportionality in criminal sentencing. It undermines freedom of expression and association. It threatens the right to health as people living with HIV are arrested, outed, and frightened away from treatment.
Call to Action
Outright International urges states, multilateral institutions, human rights activists in Senegal and in the region, and other stakeholders to step up and engage the Senegalese government on this legislative shift. Governments that maintain diplomatic relationships with Senegal have both the standing and the responsibility to act. Bilateral engagement is one of the most effective tools available at this moment. States can raise this legislation explicitly in diplomatic exchanges with the Senegalese government in bilateral meetings, in formal representations through their embassies, and through the human rights dialogue mechanisms that exist precisely for this purpose.
International mobilization must also extend beyond Senegal, calibrated to the pattern, not just to the individual law. Engaging Senegal in isolation, without recognizing the regional architecture of repression of which this bill is a part, risks missing the scale of what is being built. Recent revelations that U.S.-based far-right activists with the hate group MassResistance lobbied for Senegal’s amendment as well as the anti-LGBTQ bill in Ghana, a fact that should raise alarm bells regarding further copy-and-paste criminalization efforts in the region and beyond.
Within Senegal, there is a long history of human rights activism. Senegalese human rights advocates, whether or not they work actively on the rights of sexual and gender minorities, should be aware of the dangers inherent in a law that subjects the private and associative lives of individuals and civil society groups to rigid government control. They should stand with LGBTQ activists in vociferously opposing the law’s imposition.
Senegal has much to be proud of in its democratic tradition, its cultural richness, and its contributions to regional leadership. That legacy is not served by a law that imposes stricter penalties on people based on who they are, how they love, and whose rights they speak up to protect.
The Senegalese people deserve a government that protects all of them, not one that protects some by persecuting others.
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