$300,000 to Promote LGBTQ+ Acceptance in Botswana — the Country That Already Decriminalized It

Botswana’s High Court Decriminalized Homosexuality in 2019. Its Appeals Court Upheld That in 2021. The State Department Funded Follow-On Advocacy Anyway.

The State Department funded $300,000 in programs promoting LGBTQ+ acceptance in Botswana. This is one of the most contextually interesting items in the DOGE sweep because Botswana, unlike Nigeria or most of the African continent, actually decriminalized homosexuality through its High Court in June 2019 — a landmark ruling in the context of African LGBTQ+ rights. Botswana’s Court of Appeal upheld the decriminalization decision in 2021. The American funding continued after those rulings.

The programs post-decriminalization shifted toward social acceptance work — reducing cultural stigma, supporting civil society organizations, and building on the legal change with community outreach. Decriminalization in law does not automatically produce social acceptance in practice; this is a well-documented gap in human rights transitions. Whether $300,000 in American State Department funding was the right instrument to close that gap in a stable, peaceful, upper-middle-income country that had already made its own legal decision is the legitimate question.