A research fellow at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), Dr. Edwin Coleman, says Ghana’s Anti-LGBT bill has no strong justifications to stifle the individual rights of people in the country.

According to him, all arguments raised to support the bill are not steeped in science and thus provide a weak base to stifle the basic human rights of a group of people.

Speaking on JoyNews’ The Law, the Researcher explained that “the state can intervene in fundamental human rights. No doubt about it.

“But my case is if we want to restrict human rights, if we want to restrict the individual rights, we need to ensure that we have a justification that is properly grounded in science. I don’t see anything like that in this case, I don’t see anything like that in this one.”

He said, “For instance, in the memorandum, they stated that 18.1% in terms of HIV infection is from same-sex people; logically what about the other 81%?”

Dr. Coleman stated that without an extensive scientific justification for the bill, it would be out of order to go ahead and adopt it as law.

“If you look at the memorandum and the bill carefully, my position is clear, we can restrict whatever that we want to restrict, but if that restriction is not well-grounded and justified, the fact that the constitution says we can justify fundamental human rights doesn’t mean you can just take anything from anywhere to say that yes, this fits within our social-cultural values, let us use it to restrict fundamental rights,” he concluded.