Human Rights Watch accused Senegalese authorities on Monday, October 12, 2026, of intensifying repression against LGBT individuals, including arrests, forced HIV tests, and obstacles to accessing a lawyer. The organization calls for an end to these practices, while the total number of detentions has not been officially confirmed.<\/p>\n
The report is based on interviews conducted in May with 39 individuals, including former detainees, lawyers, healthcare professionals, civil society representatives, and public officials. HRW also states that it reviewed official statements and press reports.<\/p>\n
According to the African Meeting for the Defense of Human Rights, at least 212 people were arrested between February and July. Another network reports a total exceeding 300. HRW specifies that it has not been able to independently verify the overall number of arrests, and the Associated Press notes the absence of consolidated official data.<\/p>\n
The law enacted on March 27 amended Article 319 of the Penal Code. It now provides for a prison sentence of five to ten years and a fine of two to ten million CFA francs for acts defined by the text as unnatural. It also criminalizes their promotion and financing.<\/p>\n
The bill was adopted by 135 votes, with no votes against and three abstentions. During the parliamentary proceedings, the government argued that the previous wording was too vague and that the previous sanctions were insufficient.<\/p>\n
HRW, on the other hand, believes that the expansion of the system increases the risks of violations of privacy, the right to defense, and medical consent. Professionals interviewed by the organization say that the fear of arrest deters some people from HIV testing and treatment.<\/p>\n
The organization states that it sent a series of questions to the Ministry of Justice, the gendarmerie, and the police on September 29, with no response at the time of publication.<\/p>\n
The issue arises a few weeks before the Dakar Youth Olympic Games, scheduled from October 31 to November 13. HRW considers that the criticized measures are incompatible with several guarantees under Senegalese and international law, an assessment that the government had not commented on at the time the report was published.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The organization mentions arrests, forced HIV tests, and obstacles to accessing a lawyer, accusations not confirmed by the authorities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":532642,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_trash_the_other_posts":false,"_benews_format":"","_benews_media_url":"","_benews_urgent_until":0,"_benews_essentials":"","_benews_format_auto":"","_benews_nl_alert":false,"_benews_premium":false,"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"pays":[145],"personnalite":[],"class_list":["post-532641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-policy-news-benews","pays-senegal-west-africa"],"acf":{"type_de_publication":"actualite","nom_de_linstitution":"","description_de_linstitution":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532641"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":532643,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532641\/revisions\/532643"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532641"},{"taxonomy":"pays","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pays?post=532641"},{"taxonomy":"personnalite","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/personnalite?post=532641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}