Details for Forbidden: Institutionalizing Discrimination Against Gays and Lesbians in Burundi

Burundian LGBT people were devastated in November 2008, when the National Assembly voted in favor of adding an article to the proposed new Criminal Code that would penalize same-sex relations between consenting adults. Human Rights Watch (2009).

Burundian lawyers and politicians, along with international experts, had spent two years revising the old criminal code, which dated to 1981, but the National Assembly’s human rights commission added the anti-homosexuality provision at the last minute. Human Rights Watch teamed up with a photographer to create portraits of ten of these young people, many of whom feel that their very identities have been rendered criminal by Burundi’s new law. HRW hope that others will draw lessons from these narratives and will work to restore the rights of LGBT people.