Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

AJWS Wants U.S. To Recall Envoys Pulled From Gay-Ban Uganda and Nigeria

The American Jewish World Service called on the Obama administration to pull ambassadors from Uganda and Nigeria because of what it says are escalating anti-gay and other repressive measures by those governments.

In a statement, AJWS asked U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday to bring ambassadors from those two African countries back to the United States “in order to evaluate future diplomatic relationships.”

Ruth Messinger, the president of AJWS, cited Nigeria’s new laws targeting the LGBT community, and the Ugandan governments blocking of political demonstrations, banning the wearing of revealing clothing as well as its anti-LGBT policies. “We must send the message to both governments that these actions have consequences,” she said.

“As Jews, we know all too well that the stripping away of human rights from specific groups of individuals is often a precursor to targeted destruction,” she said in the statement. “We cannot continue to conduct business as usual while people lose their freedoms just because of who they are and whom they love. We must act now to put an end to this injustice.”

AJWS provides development assistance in Africa and other parts of the world.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.