With Uganda already finalizing plans to table an amendment to the 2014 Anti-Homosexuality Act, several international media and newswires have come up to suggest that the proposed amendment will hurt Uganda’s tourism sector.
Uganda is proposing an amendment to the law that was passed in 2013, to include a death penalty as well as handle anyone involved in the promotion and recruitment of people into homosexuality.
The Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014 was passed by Parliament, on 20 December 2013 with life in prison substituted for the death penalty.
According to Uganda’s Ethics and Integrity Minister Simon Lokodo the bill is being reintroduced because of the massive recruitment of gay people in the country with the current laws being too limited to handle the scope.
“We want it made clear that anyone who is even involved in promotion and recruitment has to be criminalized,” said Lokodo. “Those that do grave acts will be given the death sentence,” he added.
Lokodo said that he is confident that the amendment will receive the required two-thirds majority backing in Parliament to pass the law with new proposed amendments.
Can the amended act hurt Uganda’s tourism sector?
While several international newswires and online media have intimated that Uganda’s tourism may face a boycott from members of the International Gay & Lesbian Association (IGLA) that contribute about US$140 billion to the global travel and tourism industry, Uganda can still receive the other straight community tourists who contribute US$8.8 trillion.
Uganda can’t be bullied with boycott threats from members of the International Gay & Lesbian Association who only contribute just about 1% to the global travel and tourism sector earnings hence trampling upon their culture and values.
According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), the Travel and Tourism industry is growing at 3.9% globally with an estimated 1.8 billion people expected to travel to a destination outside their countries of origin by 2020.
This means that out of the 1.8 billion people expected to travel outside their countries by next year and beyond, only 1% of those will most likely be gay or attached to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexuals, Transgender or Intersex community.
It is true that globally, about 18 million people who travel could be members of the LGBTIs community but this can’t be a major bully point for countries like Uganda not to stand their stance and protect their culture and values.
Countries like Uganda and others who still think protection of their cultures and values are important can always go in to lure the remaining 1.782 billion people to visit their flora and fauna without compromising their cultural values.
Globally, the LGBTI movement has been promoted or backed by the United States’ Democratic Party. The party and the LGBTI community now hope that if their presidential candidate and former US Vice President Joe Biden managed to successfully defeat Republican’s Donald Trump in the upcoming 2020 USA elections, their movement will be reignited since Barack Obama left power on January 20, 2017.
Biden in a recent interview said that if he was elected president, he would open a US State Department section to sanction countries for violating human rights for LGBT people anywhere in the world.
