COULD SEYCHELLES LEGALISE HOMOSEXUALITY SOON?

The Seychelles could start fulfilling its earlier promise to legalise homosexuality.

The blog Denisnzioka.co.ke reports that the country’s Judicial College hosted a public discussion on “discrimination of gay people, marriage quality and morality” on Monday.

In 2011, the Seychelles government told the United Nations Human Rights Council that it planned to decriminalise homosexuality and to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

It noted then that its colonial-era crime of “sodomy” had “never been applied against anyone.”

The government stated that it would “decide as to when and to what extend the legislation could be amended to better guarantee the Constitutional precept that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual persons are not to be discriminated in Seychelles.”

Under the country’s current penal code, men who have “carnal knowledge against the order of nature” with other men can be punished with 14 years in prison.

In 2006, the prohibition of employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation was added to the country’s Employment Act.

With a population of under 100,000, the Republic of Seychelles consists of 155-islands located around 1,500 kilometres east of mainland Southeast Africa.