Two Years of Legal Bigotry , Daily Brief, 27 May 2025.

When Uganda enacted its draconian Anti-Homosexuality Act in 2023, there were dire warnings. Legal experts and human rights defenders inside the country and outside predicted it would be a “disaster for human rights.” 

Now, two years on, it’s clearer than ever those warnings were right. 

A new Human Rights Watch report documents the damage. 

Since the law came into force, Ugandan authorities have perpetrated widespread discrimination and violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, their families, and their supporters.  

On the strictly legal side, the law allowed a whole new wave of human rights violations. Since May 2023, authorities arbitrarily have arrested and detained LGBT people essentially for being who they are. 

This has included underhanded means. Authorities have used entrapment via social media and dating apps, luring people in to arrest them. They’ve extorted money from LGBT people in exchange for releasing them from police custody.  

Ugandan authorities also conducted a crackdown against LGBT rights groups. They shut down organizations that provide vital legal, sexual, and mental health services. They arrested their staff. In some cases, they seized equipment and tried to solicit bribes from their staff. 

And the damage the 2023 law has done extends well beyond the use and abuse of law itself. It’s created a poisonous atmosphere in the country for LGBT folks and their families. 

LGBT people have faced physical attacks and online harassment because of their sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or their LGBT rights activism. Many victims said they reported these attacks to the police, who took no discernible action. 

Of course, the situation for LGBT folks in Uganda was bad before this law came into force. Violence targeting LGBT people and anti-LGBT rhetoric existed well before 2023. 

But the two-year-old law has made things so much worse. It ramped up already existing abuse, discrimination, intimidation, and violence against LGBT people to unprecedented heights in Uganda.  

The impact has been devastating, not only on the lives of LGBT people, but also for their families, activists, allies, and others.  

Ugandan authorities should change course. They should stop encouraging bigotry and discrimination. They should end their crackdown on LGBT people.  

Most of all, they should scrap this destructive law.