Activists in the region say politicians regard LGBTQ+ people as \u2018the easiest scapegoats to maintain their power\u2019<\/p>\n
A growing number of west African countries are implementing or strengthening anti-LGBTQ+ laws, amid local political pressures and a global pushback against LGBTQ+ rights.<\/p>\n
In March, Senegal doubled the maximum prison sentence<\/a> for gay sex to 10 years and criminalised the \u201cpromotion\u201d of homosexuality. Niger criminalised \u201csexual relations with a person of the same sex\u201d<\/a> in February, the first time same-sex intimacy had been outlawed in the country.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Activists in the region say politicians regard LGBTQ+ people as \u2018the easiest scapegoats to maintain their power\u2019 A growing number of west African countries are implementing or strengthening anti-LGBTQ+ laws, … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnnglobalnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnnglobalnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnnglobalnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnnglobalnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnnglobalnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnnglobalnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnnglobalnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnnglobalnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnnglobalnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}