The Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) has urged Parliament to ensure that the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, 2025, does not undermine funding from international partners.
Speaking at a stakeholder engagement on the proposed legislation, widely known as the anti-LGBTQ bill, CHRAJ’s Director of Human Rights, Mary Adjeley Nartey, said the bill must be carefully structured to avoid unintended consequences for institutions that rely on donor support.
“As Oliver Twist, I always ask for more because, as a national human rights institution, most of our funders are international partners,” she said.
Nartey noted that concerns over funding had not been fully addressed in discussions around the bill and called for specific provisions to protect donor-backed programmes.
“I’ve observed that the issue of funding has not been put to rest… to ensure that our international donors and partners who support the work we do may not be found, for want of a better word, culpable in their quest to help various institutions,” she said.
She warned that organisations involved in public health and human rights work, including the Ghana AIDS Commission and the Ghana Health Service, could be affected if safeguards are not included.
Nartey appealed to lawmakers to consider introducing clauses that would protect donor funding while deliberating on the bill.
“Inasmuch as we are about to consider the memos, I still would put out a call for honourable members to consider in the area of funding how best we could put up a clause to cater for this,” she said.
