World Bank Review Team To Recommend Approving Loan To Uganda Despite Anti-Homosexuality Act

[DonViejo]

Meanwhile, Uganda’s health ministry is considering requiring LGBT patients “disclose their sexual orientation” when seeking care.

J. Lester Feder
BuzzFeed Staff

WASHINGTON — A $90 million loan from the World Bank to Uganda should be allowed to proceed so long as the government issues guidelines protecting LGBT patients and healthcare workers, recommends a team of consultants hired by the bank according to a source familiar with their report.

The World Bank put the loan on hold the day before it was due for final approval from the bank’s board in February because of concerns that the Anti-Homosexuality Act could impede access for LGBT patients and endanger health care workers. The act, which Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed into law on Feb. 24, not only imposes up to a lifetime prison sentence for homosexuality, but also potentially exposes health care workers who treat LGBT people to arrest under a provision criminalizing “aiding and abetting homosexuality.” The bank’s official explanation at the time was that it wanted to “ensure that the development objectives” of the loan, which was primarily aimed at maternal health but also subsidized the renovation of health care centers, “would not be adversely affected by the enactment of this new law.”

“None of the options [recommended by the review team] included suspension of the funds,” said the source familiar with the report, which was submitted to the bank on April 22. But the team will call for “stringent conditions” as “prerequisites for disbursement of the fund,” including government guidelines clarifying that health care workers could not be prosecuted for serving LGBT patients. The team also recommends a real-time monitoring system for abuses under the law and prohibitions on disclosing patient information that could lead LGBT people to be identified to police by health care workers. The report will now be reviewed by the bank’s leadership, which must release the funds by the end of June or the grant will be canceled under the bank’s budgeting rules.

Bank spokesman David Theis declined to comment on the review, saying in an email, “The Bank continues to review the postponed US $90 million health project for Uganda and has not yet made a final decision.”

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