Equatorial Guinea

Equatorial Guinea’s penal code, most recently updated in 2022, does not explicitly criminalize same-sex intimacy or gender diversity. However, in 2020, the country began the process of approving a Draft Law Regulating Prostitution and the Rights of Homosexuals, which would effectively criminalize LGBTIQ people. The process is not complete, but the law has not been withdrawn either. Its status is unclear at the moment. In addition, activists report that public authorities continue to apply the obsolete Law on Vagrants and Criminals of 1954, which normalizes conversion practices and classifies homosexuality as an illness. In addition, three legal instruments in Equatorial Guinea institutionalize discrimination based on sexual orientation, including sanctions against homosexuality in the Military Justice Code, a ministerial order banning “immoral” activities such as homosexuality, and a provincial regulation restricting fundamental rights and same-sex marriage.

In 2024, during the Universal Periodic Review process at the UN Human Rights Council, Equatorial Guinea received nine recommendations from other member states to adopt political and legislative measures to combat discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, prohibit conversion therapies, adopt specific health policies to assist LGBTI+ individuals, protect LGBTI+ minors on the basis of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and allow the registration of civil society organizations working in these sectors. The government did not accept any of these recommendations.

The only active LGBTIQ organization in the country has been trying to legally register since 2017, but the Ministry of the Interior and Local Corporations has not made a decision since then. LGBTIQ persons face stigmatization among the broader population.