After almost a decade, Mozambique’s constitutional court has ruled in favour of the legal recognition of the country’s only LGBTQ organisation.

On Thursday, it was confirmed that the Constitutional Council had struck down an outdated and discriminatory law used to stop the country’s LGBTQ association, Lambda, from being registered.

Despite homosexuality being legalised in June last year, the government has continued to refuse to recognise the group, which is based in Maputo.

Repeated requests to the Ministry of Justice, the body in charge of registering associations, to register Lambda have borne no fruit. Although some previous Justice Ministers had worked with Lambda on an informal level, none had agreed to register it.

The matter became of international concern; the United Nations Human Rights Council has been calling on Mozambique to register Lambda since 2011.

The government had cited a clause in the Law on Associations behind its refusal. The clause declared that organisations can only be accepted if they benefit “the moral, social and economic order of the country and not offend the rights of third parties or the public good”.