Kenya’s High court on Friday in a landmark ruling upheld laws criminalizing homosexual acts between consenting adults.
The court was addressing a petition filed in 2016 by three Kenyan organizations that work to protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.
The groups said that the criminalization of same-sex conduct under articles 162 and 165 of the penal code violates the rights to equality, non-discrimination, human dignity, security, privacy, and health, all protected under Kenya’s constitution.
In 2016, Eric Gitari, an activist who was president of the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (NGLHRC), filed a petition challenging the laws.
Two other organizations, the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya (GALCK) and the Nyanza, Rift Valley and Western Kenya Network (NYARWEK), along with individual petitioners who had been personally affected by the laws, filed a second petition raising similar arguments.
The High Court consolidated the two petitions and referred them to a three-judge bench.
The court rejected the petitioners’ case that the laws violate constitutional protections, stating that the provisions are not discriminatory because they do not single out LGBT people, and that the petitioners had not proved their rights had been violated under the laws.
However, United States based rights group, Human Rights Watch(HRW), castigated the high court decision saying that Kenya’s anti-homosexuality laws are a colonial relic, first imposed by British colonizers in 1897.
“Kenya’s High Court has relegated people in same-sex relationships in Kenya to second-class citizenship, based on the absurd claim that the penal code is not discriminatory,” said Neela Ghoshal, senior LGBT rights researcher at HRW.
“Rights cannot be trampled upon in the name of social disapproval. The Court of Appeal should revisit this ruling urgently,” she added.
“The laws are rarely enforced – Human Rights Watch is aware of two prosecutions against four people under article 162 in the last 10 years. But they underpin a broad array of human rights abuses and contribute to a climate of discrimination and violence,” the rights group said in a statement issued in Nairobi.
JK/as/APA