Uganda’s Minister of State for East African Affairs has called for foreigners from countries that have legalized same-sex marriage to be banned from adopting children from the five member states of the East African Community (EAC) group of nations to prevent them from ending up with same-sex couples as parents.

The EAC is an intergovernmental organization composed of the five countries in the African Great Lakes region of Africa – Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda – and is a potential precursor to an East African Federation, a proposed new single sovereign state.

Of those only Rwanda does not criminalize homosexuality and none allow adoption by local same-sex couples.

Minister Shem Bageine made the appeal before the general purpose committee of the EAC Legislative Assembly which is meeting in the Ugandan Parliament this week.

Minister Bageine told the assembly that he was concerned about the prospect that a Ugandan child would be adopted in the West by a gay couple and that it would be raised to think a man in a dress was its mother.

‘Should our students be adopted by them? And because of that, if we say no then we don’t get aid? No, I don’t accept that,’ Minister Bageine told Uganda’s NTV network in an interview after speaking to the assembly.

Bageine appeared to be trying to link the issue to sanctions against Uganda that were threatened when it attempted to pass legislation which would have seen sexually active LGBTI people given the death penalty or jailed for the rest of their lives.

However GSN is not aware of any country having raised objections about how African states choose to regulate adoptions either domestically or by people coming from overseas.

Reacting to Bageine’s comments, director of African LGBTI rights organization Out and Proud Diamond Group, Edwin Sesange said he did not believe that the minister’s concern was genuinely for the children of the region.

‘I don’t think the Hon Minister has the best interests of the children at his heart,’ Sesange said in a statement to GSN, ‘Children deserve love, care and a stable family.’

‘His comments regarding same-sex couples are displaying how homophobia is even influencing formulation of other laws in the region. These kind of laws should not be brought in place because they contravene with the best interests of a child.’

A Rwandan representative to the assembly also stressed the need for uniform laws across the region when it came to overseas adoption but for the different reason of preventing children from ending up in the hands of criminal organ traffickers.

She said her government was aware of around four hundred Rwandan children having suffered that fate in recent years.