LGBT Rights in Kenya - Views of Government Officials

Views of Government Officials

In November 2010, Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga said the behavior of gay couples was "unnatural" and that, "If found the homosexuals should be arrested and taken to relevant authorities". He asserted that "there was no need for homosexual relationships" because the most recent census showed there were more women than men. He said it was "madness for a man to fall in love with another man while there were plenty of women" and that "there was no need for women to engage in lesbianism yet they can bear children". Days later, Odinga denied ordering the arrest of gay couples, saying he meant only that same-sex marriages are illegal in Kenya.

In November 2010, the commissioner of prisons, Isaiah Osugo, announced a plan for closed-circuit television surveillance in Kenyan prisons to curb sex between male inmates.

The chief justice of the Kenyan Supreme Court, Willy Munyoki Mutunga, said at a groundbreaking ceremony for FIDA Uganda in Kampala on 8 September 2011,

The other frontier of marginalization is the gay rights movement. Gay rights are human rights. Here I'm simply confining my statement to the context of human rights and social justice paradigm, and avoiding the controversy that exists in our constitutions and various legislation. As far as I know, human rights principles that we work on, do not allow us to implement human rights selectively. We need clarity on this issue within the human rights movement in East Africa, if we are to face the challenges that are spearheaded by powerful political and religious forces in our midst. I find the arguments made by some of our human rights activists, the so-called "moral arguments", simply rationalizations for using human rights principles opportunistically and selectively. We need to bring together the opposing viewpoints in the movement of this issue for final and conclusive debate.