France champions un resolution for global lgbt+ protection after Senegal’s new law

France’s Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, announced on Saturday via the social media platform X that Paris is advancing a draft resolution at the United Nations Human Rights Council. This significant diplomatic initiative aims to prohibit states from criminalizing LGBT+ individuals. The move by France comes just two months after Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye enacted a law that significantly toughens the penalties for homosexuality. Concurrently, a French national is currently held in detention in Dakar under the provisions of this very legislation.

“You can count on France: it works, and will always work, to advance the human rights agenda,” stated the head of French diplomacy. He highlighted what he described as a “conservative push” that has been gaining ground across most regions of the world over the past decade.

diplomatic sequence initiated by the march 11 law

The new legislation, passed unanimously by the Senegalese National Assembly on March 11, 2026, with 135 votes, and subsequently promulgated on March 30, dramatically increases the maximum prison sentence for “unnatural acts” from five to ten years. It also multiplies the cap on fines tenfold, now set at ten million CFA francs. Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko championed the text as a measure of national sovereignty, and it further criminalizes the promotion, support, or financing of homosexuality, bisexuality, and transsexuality.

Previously, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk had urged Dakar not to enact the law, asserting that it violated Senegal’s international commitments. On April 16, Pascal Confavreux, spokesperson for the Quai d’Orsay, conveyed Paris’s concerns, confirming that Minister Barrot had discussed the matter with his Senegalese counterpart, Cheikh Niang, during a meeting at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

french national detained in Dakar

A French citizen has been held in custody in Senegal since February 14, facing charges under the recently enacted law. According to services from the Quai d’Orsay, the French consulate in Dakar has visited the individual on four occasions and remains in contact with their family. Separately, on April 10, a court in Dakar sentenced a young Senegalese man, born in 2002, to six years in prison for similar offenses.

The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs reports that 62 nations worldwide continue to criminalize consensual homosexual relations, with eleven of these jurisdictions imposing the death penalty. The specific date for the examination of the French draft resolution by the Human Rights Council in Genève has not yet been announced.