Junta-run Burkina Faso has passed a law banning homosexuality and instituting punishments of up to five years in jail, the latest in a clutch of African nations to pass anti-gay legislation.
“The law provides for a prison sentence of between two and five years as well as fines,” Justice Minister Edasso Rodrigue Bayala said on national broadcaster RTB.
“If a person is a perpetrator of homosexual or similar practices, all the bizarre behaviour, they will go before the judge,” he said, adding that foreign nationals would be deported under the law.
Alright, I found it on RTB’s website. It’s part of the (french language) 8pm news broadcast from yesterday: https://www.rtb.bf/2025/09/01/jt-de-20h-du-1er-septembre-2025/, starting at 16:06 timestamp. This is the new law I was discussing in the other comment, you can read the draft from last year here (use a translation tool if needed). The segment ends at 21:10.
This is an update to the previous family code law in BF, named Zatu and promulgated in 1989 (after the coup that killed Sankara). It made no mention of homosexuality in it (this is the 1989 law).
The new law has been adopted unanimously at the burkinabè parliament by 71 votes. it’s a comprehensive law project that contains more than 1113 articles, it’s not solely about LGBT rights like france24 is implying, although the news host did mention it and made a point that this new law was about “reflecting the socio-cultural reality of BF”. The Justice Minister’s speech after the vote was broadcast and he mentions the article quite late into it, first talking about family name and naturalization reforms. He also doesn’t spend a lot of time on that particular point relative to the rest (at least in the segment), but he does call homosexuality a ‘strange practice’, and this is somewhat echoed by the reported on the footage.
Not sure how this is a distinction that matters. The only way it would matter is if you’re implying that it was somehow snuck in, which I very much doubt.
Thanks for doing the deep dive. So this is just an update of an large law that was already ati-queer and the new version of the law doesn’t fix that stuff either but it isn’t like they are actively making things worse for homosexuals.
No. Being homosexual didn’t use to be illegal in the old Zatu, this law made it punishable by 2-5 years in prison along with fines. They are definitely making things worse for homosexuals and the justice minister underlined that they are intending to actively prosecute homosexuals.