French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced on X over the weekend that Paris is spearheading a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution to prevent states from criminalizing LGBTQ+ identities. This diplomatic move follows Senegal‘s enactment of a sweeping anti-homosexuality law two months prior—and comes as a French national remains detained in Dakar under the same statute.
Diplomatic response to Dakar’s new legislation
The French initiative arrives in the wake of Senegal‘s controversial legal overhaul, passed by the national assembly on March 11, 2026, with 135 votes and no opposition, and signed into law on March 30. The revised code escalates penalties for “unnatural acts” from five to ten years imprisonment while multiplying fines tenfold to ten million West African CFA francs. In an unprecedented expansion, the law criminalizes advocacy, support, or funding of LGBTQ+ rights, framing such activities as threats to national sovereignty. Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko championed the measure as a defense of Senegalese values.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, had publicly urged Dakar to veto the bill, warning it violated international human rights obligations. Days later, a spokesperson for France’s foreign ministry confirmed Jean-Noël Barrot had raised the issue directly with Senegal’s foreign affairs minister, Cheikh Niang, during a meeting in Paris.
Detention of a French national under Senegal’s new law
A French citizen has been held in a Dakar detention facility since February 14 on charges tied to the updated legislation. France’s consular team in the capital has conducted four welfare visits, maintaining contact with the detainee’s family. On April 10, a Dakar court also sentenced a 24-year-old Senegalese man to six years in prison under the same provisions.
Official records show 62 countries worldwide still criminalize consensual same-sex relations, with eleven imposing the death penalty. The timing of the French-backed UN resolution’s review at the Human Rights Council headquarters in Geneva remains unspecified.