The World Bank ends the loan to Uganda on gay rights

The World Bank says it lifted a ban on loans to Uganda, which she put two years ago when the country passed a new law against gay people.

In 2023, Uganda voted in some of the harshest anti -soldiers legislation in the world, which means anyone participating in it Some acts of the same sex It can be sentenced to death.

Since then, hundreds of people have been evacuated from their homes, have been subjected to violence or arrest because of their sexual lives, according to the Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum in Uganda.

But the World Bank says it is confident that the new “mitigation measures” will allow it to offer funding in a way that does not harm or discriminate against gay people.

BBC asked the Ugandan government and the World Bank more comment.

“The World Bank cannot fulfill its mission to end poverty and promote joint prosperity on a planet that can be coexisted unless all people can participate and benefit from the projects that we finance,” a spokesman for the news agency told AFP on Thursday.

A spokesman for the World Bank, who was not named, told Reuters that the new projects in “social protection, education, forced displacement and refugees” were approved.

Analysts say the World Bank is one of the largest external financing sources in Uganda, as it plays an important role in developing infrastructure. Road promotions and access to expanded electricity Among the projects supported by the organization In East Africa.

But some economists criticize the financing model used by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in general, saying that it perpetuates dependency and undermines sustainable growth in the poorest countries in the world by linking it to restricting loan conditions.

Uganda is among many African countries – including Ghana and Kenya In recent years, movements have witnessed to reduce the rights of gay people.

In Uganda in 2023, news of the anti -homosexual law in Uganda led to an international conviction.

The country costs between 470 million dollars and 1.7 billion dollars (347 million pounds and 1.2 billion pounds) in the year that followed, mainly due to frozen financing, According to the estimates of the UK charitable organization.

The Uganda government says that its anti -gay law reflects the conservative values ​​of its people, but its critics say that the law does not exceed mere distraction from real issues such as high unemployment and Continuous attacks on the opposition.

“It’s low fruits,” Orem Niko, a researcher working in Human Rights Watch in Uganda, Tell CBC at that time.

“It has been framing as a foreign thing and threatens the children of people.”

Victims of hitting, evacuation Worse than that, the new Uganda law encouraged people to attack them based on their perceived sexual lives.

The fact that the law provides for a 20 -year prison sentence for “enhancing” homosexuality as an attack on anyone who defends LGBTQ rights, but the government denies this.

In claiming that homosexuality was allowed “in the private sector but not promoting it”, the Minister of Information in Uganda told Agence France -Presse that the law was not “targeting or distinguishing anyone.”

Chris Bariumusi also said that the World Bank’s ban on lending to Uganda two years ago was “unjustified” but welcomed the change of the organization of the organization.