Téa Braun is the director of Human Dignity Trust

In Kenya, February 22 2019 could be an anniversary remembered for generations.

This is the date on which a three-judge bench at the Constitutional Court in Nairobi will give Kenyans – and the world – their decision on whether laws that criminalise the private, consensual relations of people of the same sex are to be scrapped.

The case, heard in February 2018, was brought by Eric Gitari, until recently the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, a local rights organisation that provides free legal aid services to Kenya’s persecuted LGBT+ community.

If the Kenyan judges’ decision is, as we all hope, to end this state-sanctioned discrimination against LGBT+ people, it will be seismic.

Like the ground-breaking ruling in India in September 2018, with this case comes the opportunity to draw to a close a long history of persecution.

Reverberations from a positive ruling would also be felt far outside the country’s borders. A progressive move by such a major African democracy, with significant influence on the continent and beyond, would be another high-water mark in history for humanity. Read more via Openly