2021 Human Righs Violations Report

In many countries, the ambition of a policy or legal regulation is to enforce existing social perceptions or moral codes. Laws are designed to regulate behaviour and sometimes engineer change. These laws can provide certainty about the values held by a community when some underlying uncertainty exists and can drive social perception positively or negatively. In Nigeria today, the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act 2014 (SSMPA) has encouraged and sanctioned violence against LGBT+ persons in the country. The overarching effect of the law, and similarly discriminatory laws, has been to enforce homophobic values and suppress LGBT+ rights and identities, increasing the myriad of challenges faced by Lesbians, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Intersex persons across spheres.