World Bank officials said they wanted to guarantee the projects the loan was destined to support were not going to be adversely affected by the new law.
The loan was intended to boost Uganda’s health services.
The new law, enacted on Monday, strengthens already strict legislation relating to homosexuals in the country.
It allows life imprisonment as the penalty for acts of “aggravated homosexuality” and also criminalises the “promotion” of homosexuality”.
A spokesman for the World Bank said: “We have postponed the project for further review to ensure that the development objectives would not be adversely affected by the enactment of this new law.”
The loan was supposed to be approved on Thursday to supplement a 2010 loan that focused on maternal health, newborn care and family planning.
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim warned that legislation restricting sexual rights “can hurt a country’s competitiveness by discouraging multinational companies from investing or locating their activities in those nations”.
He said the World Bank would discuss how such discrimination “would affect our projects and our gay and lesbian staff members”.
In his view, he adds, fighting “to eliminate all institutionalized discrimination is an urgent task”
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