The British High Commissioner to Ghana is urging Ghanaian lawmakers to allow the country’s process to run its natural course amid the determination to pass the Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill also known as the Anti-LGBTQ bill.
Speaking in a yet-to-be-aired interview on Foreign Affairs on JoyNews, Harriet Thompson said that there is a need to ensure that a variety of views are heard in the process of considering the legislation which borders on the sexual and reproductive rights of a section of the population.
She told the host Blessed Sogah that “Ghana’s parliamentary process has got to run its course appropriately and there is a clearly set out process that provides for a debate. It provides for a variety of views to be heard.”
“It has got the well-established committee system and the Speaker of Parliament is the person who runs that process and so I firmly hope that all of that will be taken into account as the story progresses,” Madam Thompson said.
It is, however, unclear how the government of Ghana intends to deal with these concerns from the international community.
President Akufo Addo at a recently held joint conference with visiting US Vice President Kamala Harris noted that “the Attorney General has found it necessary to speak to the committee (parliament) about it regarding the constitutionality or otherwise of several of its provisions,” he said. “But at the end of the process, I will come in.”
