An exclusive CNN investigation has found that some Western governments who pledged to support LGBTQI+ rights have also funded supporters of a controversial bill in Ghana that could introduce harsh sentences for advocating for sexual and gender minorities' rights.
In the five years up to 2021, at least $5 million in aid from Europe and the US went to projects run by or benefiting churches in Ghana whose leaders have backed this bill and have a long track-record of anti-LGBTQI+ statements and activities, according to CNN's analysis of financial data and communication with the donors.
There is no indication the funding identified went to any explicitly anti-LGBTQI+ activities. However, these religious organizations are now pushing for the anti-LGBTQI+ bill, introduced last year and officially known as the Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill, to be made law.
In one instance, CNN's analysis revealed that more than $140,000 of UK and US taxpayers' money in 2018-2020 went to the Christian Council of Ghana (CCG), an association of 29 churches and Christian organizations, which in 2020 said: "As we indicated in times past, our cultural norms and religious values as a nation do not support LGBTQ rights."
During that same period, the UK became co-chair of the international Equal Rights Coalition to "protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people" and promote "inclusive development" worldwide.
CNN's analysis also found that some other members of the Equal Rights Coalition -- the US, Germany, and Italy -- have funded projects by or for churches in Ghana that have similarly opposed LGBTQI+ rights before, during, and after they benefited from aid money.
Human rights advocates called Western donors' funding practices exposed by CNN "surprising" and "inconsistent."
"It's like stating you're going to go green and then funding the petrol industry," said Neil Datta, executive director of the European Parliamentary Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Rights.
Donor agencies need to be "more aware that sexual and reproductive rights are contested issues", and make sure that "they are not inadvertently funding the organizations who are working against some of their other objectives," he said, calling for stricter "background checks" on potential grantees.
"This reveals inconsistencies in the funding practices of major donors and implicates them as complicit in fostering homophobia and transphobia in Ghana," said Caroline Koussaiman, executive director of the Initiative Sankofa d'Afrique de l'Ouest (ISDAO), an activist-led fund supporting gender diversity and sexual rights in West Africa. "This is the antithesis of "do no harm" principles."
"We need donors to support our struggles for liberation, and not directly or indirectly fund anti-gender movements which we know are extremely well resourced," she added.
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