Gabon will join a handful of African countries to legally allow homosexuality.
The bill if assented to by the president will expunge a 2019 law that criminalised homosexuality, stipulating a six months jail term and sizeable fine for gay sex.
Reports by such groups in other African countries have routinely alleged that the LGBT community have been forced underground due to harassment from anti-gay elements in their societies and actions of law enforcement.
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June 24: Gabon MPs vote to decriminalise homosexuality
Lawmakers in Gabon’s lower house of parliament on Tuesday voted to decriminalise homosexuality, becoming one of the few countries in sub-Saharan Africa to reverse a law that punishes sexual relations between people of the same sex.
Forty-eight members of parliament backed the proposed initiative by the government to revise an article of the 2019 law that criminalised homosexuality.
