'Gay Rights Are Human Rights' Says Kenya's Chief Justice

It might appear that Kenya's Chief Justice Willy Mutunga is echoing Sec. of State Hillary Clinton's landmark UN address, but the much-needed comments asserting that gay rights are human rights were actually made two months prior to Clinton's Geneva speech. Details follow.

Said Mutunga in a video that appeared on YouTube on Tuesday:

We have fought and succeeded in demanding our rights of movement and association although we can’t take them for granted. We should see less of the workshopping in hotels, less of the flipcharts and the [?], as we now move to the countrysides and make sure our people own and protect the human rights and social justice messages.

The other frontier of marginalization is the gay rights movement. Gay rights are human rights. Here I’m simply confining my statement to the context of human rights and social justice paradigm, and avoiding the controversy that exists in our constitutions and various legislation. As far as I know, human rights principles that we work on, do not allow us to implement human rights selectively. We need clarity on this issue within the human rights movement in East Africa, if we are to face the challenges that are spearheaded by powerful political and religious forces in our midst. I find the arguments made by some of our human rights activists, the so-called “moral arguments” simply rationalizations for using human rights principles opportunistically and selectively. We need to bring together the opposing viewpoints in the movement of this issue for final and conclusive debate.

I thank the FIDA movement, membership, leadership, and its national, regional and global network for the honor bestowed on me. I’m very proud of this honor and I will never take it for granted.

The gay supportive comments come at a crucial time in Kenya. Though when compared with neighboring Uganda the country is relatively LGBT-friendly, a recent spate of mobs attacking gay Kenyans has troubled the international community.


(2012-02-01/instinctmagazine)