African Court on Human and People’s Rights defends socio-economic rights of gender-nonconforming and sex workers
Advisory Opinion No. 001/2018 issued by the African Court on Human and People’s Rights on 4 December 2020 with a section entitled “Vagrancy laws and the right to non-discrimination and equality” includes paragraph 70, where the court explicitly refers to gender non-conforming people and sex workers in the following terms:
Against the above background, the Court notes that vagrancy laws, effectively, punish the poor and underprivileged, including but not limited to the homeless, the disabled, the gender-nonconforming, sex workers, hawkers, street vendors, and individuals who otherwise use public spaces to earn a living. Notably, however, individuals under such difficult circumstances are already challenged in enjoying their other rights including more specifically their socio-economic rights. Vagrancy laws, therefore, serve to exacerbate their situation by further depriving them of their right to be treated equally before the law.
The conclusion of the Court reads:
The court (…) finds that vagrancy laws, including but not limited to those that contain offences which criminalise the status of a person as being without a fixed home, employment or means of subsistence, as having no fixed abode nor means of subsistence, and trade or profession; as being a suspected person or reputed thief who has no visible means of subsistence and cannot give a good account of him or herself; and as being idle and who does not have visible means of subsistence and cannot give good account of him or herself violate; and also those laws that order the forcible removal of any person declared to be a vagrant and laws that permit the arrest without a warrant of a person suspected of being a vagrant are incompatible with Articles 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 12 and 18 of the Charter;
International and Comparative SOGIESC Law - Professor Andreas R Ziegler 