Equatorial Guinea

Equatorial Guinea’s penal code, most recently updated in 2022, does not criminalize same-sex intimacy or gender diversity. However, in 2020, the country began the process of approving a Draft Law Regulating Prostitution and the Rights of Homosexuals, which would effectively criminalize LGBTIQ people. The process is not completed, but the law is also not withdrawn. Its status is unclear at the moment. In addition, activists report that public authorities continue to apply the obsolete Law on Vagrants and Criminals of 1954, which normalizes conversion therapies and classifies homosexuality as an illness. LGBTIQ persons face stigmatization among the broader population, and same-sex couples and households headed by same-sex couples are not eligible for the same legal protections available to different-sex couples. 

Ministerial Order 1/2003 prohibits the use of tourist establishments as brothels for sex work, as well as “activities that violate morality and good customs,” and is often used as a tool to persecute sexual minorities. Human rights organizations reported that in the cities of Bata and Malabo, the most populated in the country, 32 cases of arbitrary detentions of LGBTIQ people were recorded in 2023. 

In 2019, Equatorial Guinea received recommendations to adopt political and legislative measures to combat discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. To date, the executive has failed to implement any of the recommendations. The only active LGBTIQ organization in the country has been trying to legally register since 2017, but the Ministry of the Interior and Local Corporations has not given any decision since then.

*Outright research indicates that the bodily autonomy of intersex people is not respected and protected in this country.