Tyranny of the majority? Contravention of human rights in a democratic Senegal

Image credits: Nico Lavaud, University of South Florida

By Briggs Collins Murray

Introduction

On a warm, sunny day in early March 2026, the sun beamed down on the alabaster facade of the National Assembly of Senegal.  Outside, Atlantic seagulls squawked as they circled overhead, eyes scanning for prey.  Inside, elected deputies cawed as they debated in a hemicycle, setting their sights on a prey of their own: the domestic LGBT community.  

“I speak to international opinion: homosexuals will no longer breathe in this country,” elected deputy Diaraye Ba crowed.  “Homosexuals will no longer have the freedom of expression in this country.  We have our values, we have a society that is young and that we must protect” (self-translated from French).  As a member of the African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity (PASTEF) political party—which holds 130 of the 165 National Assembly seats—Ba is one of the many outspoken Senegalese legislators who worked tirelessly to increase the punishment for homosexuality.  Her efforts were rewarded by the recent promulgation of a harsh anti-LGBT law, passed by a vote of 135-0 (with three abstentions) on 11 March, 2026.  Although Senegal had previously considered “acts against nature”—a euphemism for homosexuality—a criminal offense, this new law doubles the maximum prison penalty for same-sex couples.  More consequentially, this law renders it illegal to simply “promote” homosexuality, handing down prison sentences of 3-7 years to activists and financial patrons implicated in LGBT community support.  

The impacts of this law are already noticeable.  Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) aiding LGBT persons have been forced to scale back support, or even shutter entirely.  Up until 2025, the NGO Free Senegal operated a safehouse in the capital city of Dakar to shelter persecuted LGBT people in imminent danger.  Last year, the organization had no choice but to close this place of refuge, fearing that neighbors would inform the government of the now-illegal shelter.  Under the new anti-LGBT law, activists shown to be working with Free Senegal could be imprisoned for up to seven years.  This law is particularly pernicious for a free civil society, as the state can now control which non-governmental activities it sanctions, and which ones it forbids.

More broadly, one can imagine a “chilling effect” on Senegalese civil society, whereby NGOs refuse to support any person suspected of being LGBT out of paranoia and uncertainty.  The criminal prosecution sanctioned by the new law is not merely relegated to LGBT-focused NGOs; rather, it applies to all missions within the penumbra of humanitarian aid.  We can reify this law’s chilling effect by considering the case of Caritas Internationalis, a Catholic mission to provide relief to refugee and displaced populations who have fled to Dakar.  With a humanitarian raison d’être, Caritas does not discriminate in how they service persons in need.  My in-person interview with a nun working with Caritas revealed that in Dakar, Caritas serves numerous non-heterosexual refugees: rampant homophobia in West Africa causes many LGBT youth to flee their home countries in search of freedom from persecution.  However, under the new law, it is now entirely within the purview of the criminal justice system to imprison nuns known to the law as having offered “protection” to LGBT persons.  In short, this inhumane law attempts to strip LGBT persons in Senegal of safe harbor and support services—a clear violation of international human rights law. 

Contemporary Human Rights Doctrine

Paradoxically, Senegal has signed and ratified binding treaties that would, in theory, protect the rights of sexual minorities.  In a 2010 briefing paper by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest court in international law leaves no room for interpretation, clearly stating that “the criminalization of same-sex sexual conduct is a violation of rights guaranteed under international law.”  The ICJ defends this position unequivocally through the principle of universality, that all persons are equal and enjoy the same rights.  This principle has been enumerated in various treaties to which Senegal is bound, including, inter alia, the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.  

These treaties, though not explicitly listing sexual orientation as a protected category, have been found to definitively protect same-sex sexual activity.  The United Nations Human Rights Committee—the organ tasked with ensuring state compliance to ICCPR provisions—ruled in the 1994 case Toonen v. Australia that consensual same-sex sexual activity is protected by the right to privacy, as detailed in ICCPR Article 17.  Later cases have also used Article 26 to show that consensual sexual activity is condoned regardless of sex through the principle of equal protection by the law.  As such, the ICJ considers this question settled as a legal matter.  There is no sufficient argument in international law that evinces a state’s right to criminalize homosexuality. 

Senegalese Political Context

Given the unequivocality of international law, the contradiction between Senegal’s international legal obligations and its domestic legislation might seem puzzling at first.  Yet, taking Senegal’s context into account reveals political and historical factors that explain, at least partially, the state’s aversion to LGBT rights.  There is one principal argument that is made to justify the Senegalese government’s hostility to LGBT persons: that LGBT rights are a Western conception that does not align with African values, thereby infringing upon sovereignty.  In Senegal, PASTEF won a resounding victory in 2024 by promising to pursue an unabashedly sovereignist political agenda, regarding foreign influence with hostility.  However, as explored below, homophobia in Africa is not historically African in essence; it is inherited from European colonizers.  This of course puts pro-sovereign, anti-LGBT politicians in quite the sticky situation.

Leading pro-sovereign voices have long argued that the West has created a set of values, including protections for same-sex activity, that do not conform to African sociocultural contexts and should therefore be rejected.  This position is echoed by the PASTEF government in Senegal.  Elected deputies like Guy Marius Sagna view LGBT advocacy to be a sinister Western plot to contaminate a pure Senegalese culture.  In parliament, Sagna made his viewpoint clear: “We consider LGBTQ values, through television channels, and embassies that fund LGBTQ associations, to be a cultural poison skillfully injected into our people.”  Critically, he invokes television media—at least 40% of television-owning Senegalese households use the French streaming service CANAL+—and foreign governments as deliberately and tactfully “poisoning” Senegalese people, thereby diluting a “pure” culture. Sagna advocates for sovereign control over cultural matters; to him, universality is nothing but a front for the West to perpetuate cultural superiority over postcolonial Africa.  Another member of parliament, Fama Be, put it more tersely: “Here in Senegal, we don’t accept this homosexuality. That’s not in our culture, that’s not in our tradition.”  

The idea that it is the state’s imperative to preserve cultural purity is noble and worthy, and would ostensibly justify homophobic legislative efforts—if it were true.  Sagna and Be’s claim that homosexuality is external to Senegalese culture is demonstrably false.  In pre-colonial Africa, there has been no discovery of legislation nor of penal codes that punished or criminalized LGBT behavior.  According to the Nordic Africa Institute, punishment for LGBT activity only began after European penal codes had been imposed on their African colonies. In a tremendous twist of irony, the anti-homosexual sentiment espoused by sovereignists like Sanga and Be is a vestige of the colonial era.  In other words, homophobia is an imported European value which has now been re-appropriated and disguised as an “African value”. 

Skeptics may concede that, even though this pattern holds for Africa in general, it is possible that Senegal is a historical exception.  Could it be that pre-colonial Senegal was equally as hostile to homosexuals?  Academics like Katrina Brazhnikov have examined this question in depth, concluding that there is no indication whatsoever to suggest that Senegal is a historical anomaly.  In fact, Brazhnikov provides convincing evidence to the contrary.  In her thesis, she highlights góor-jigéen, a group of gender non-conforming individuals fulfilling cultural and spiritual roles in pre-colonial Senegalese society.  Gender and sexual diversity flourished, and there is no data to show that these minorities were persecuted before the age of imperialism.  However, the French colonization of Senegal, between roughly 1880 and 1960, infused many new ideas and values into Senegal, including homophobia.  Brazhnikov’s research shows that one key legacy of the colonial project is that the political regard towards LGBT persons has inverted; LGBT activity devolved from generally accepted to forbidden, where it remains today.  Therefore, the homophobic rhetoric espoused by politicians like Sagna and Be stems not from a sovereign culture, but actually from an imported, foreign culture. Pre-colonial, “pure” Senegalese culture preserved spaces for LGBT inhabitants; post-colonial, adulterated Senegalese culture does not. 

Unfortunately, most politicians in Senegal have chosen to demonize this minority group, exploiting public opinion often for personal gain.  Through religion and media, the public has become increasingly hostile to LGBT populations.  In many cases, the public has mobilized to advocate for aggressive criminalization of LGBT-associated conduct.  And Samm Djiko Yi is a civil society group at the vanguard of anti-LGBT efforts.  Speaking to the Associated Press, And Samm Djiko Yi’s founder Serigne Ababacar Mboup stated: “Homosexuality is contrary to our customs, our values, and our beliefs. We are not trying to impose anything on you, so in turn, learn to respect people and their positions, especially on societal issues." 

Though Mboup regurgitates the tired and baseless claim that homosexuality is a foreign cultural importation, what is more intriguing is his position that clearly denounces the principle of universality.  To Mboup, same-sex activity—long declared a human right by the UN and various international binding treaties—is now perceived on a relative, culture-dependent basis.  Under this framework, a majority group is justified in depriving the rights of any minority group under the guise of protecting sovereign “customs”, “values” and “beliefs”.  Or stated differently, to Mboup there is no such thing as universal human rights: every civil liberty needs the majority cultural group to affirm its existence in accordance with a set of custom-value-beliefs.

Conclusion 

What is so peculiar about this situation is that the justification has no basis in logic: proponents justify anti-LGBT laws as protecting the African cultural beliefs, even though those custom-value-beliefs are not African, but rather European importations.  Despite the ludicrous justification, the new sweeping anti-LGBT law passed unanimously, and was signed into law without much brouhaha.  To an outside observer, it appears that politicians motivated by electoral incentives decided that appeasing the majority cultural group was better than defending a deeply unpopular minority group.  From a rational choice perspective, it was well worth scapegoating LGBT people to retain public support at the ballot box.  

Writing from Alabama’s Birmingham Jail in 1963, Reverend Martin Luther King coined the adage: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  And it is so too with Senegal’s persecution of sexual minorities.  Carrying the custom-value-belief argument to its logical end reveals that such a thought pattern is so illiberal as to threaten the human rights of every minority group in Senegal.  When the culturally dominant majority group possesses unilateral power to declare any given minority group’s actions as having violated the “customs”, “values”, or “beliefs” of the dominant group, then there appears to be no legal recourse to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority.  In a pluralistic country such as Senegal—with religious, ethnic, and sexual minorities—such an outcome is deleterious at its best, and Pandora's box at its worst.  It is not farfetched to imagine a future where the significant Muslim majority attempts to persecute the small Catholic minority for practicing a faith subversive to the dominant group’s custom-value-beliefs.  While I do not believe that this specific religious conflict is likely to occur, I nonetheless offer the suggestion to show that such persecution is now plausible, given the PASTEF administration’s conduct.  The 2026 anti-LGBT law marks an inflection point in Senegalese politics.  From now on, this injustice will loom large as a menace of what is possible when a tyrannical majority exercises its will, threatening justice for all.