Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has said he will convene a meeting of MPs once he receives the Anti-Gay Bill.

This, Museveni said, is to have the bill harmonized to ensure the rights of children are protected.

The statement by the head of state comes even as pressure continues to mount on him to assent to the Bill passed late last month.

“Children are children and they need to grow as children…no one should invade their childhood," a statement from Uganda’s Statehouse reads.

The MPs overwhelmingly voted to pass the Bill on March 21 with only one of the 389 who attended the debate objecting to its enactment. 

Recruiters of children into homosexuality will be slapped with a ten-year jail sentence once it becomes a Law.

The bill prescribes the death penalty for aggravated homosexuality or forcing children, the disabled, mentally ill persons and those of advanced age into homosexuality.

Attempted homosexuality will attract a 14-year jail term and up to 20 years for the promotion of homosexuality.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said on March 22 that adoption of the draconian law is shocking and devastating.

“The bill confuses consensual and non-consensual relations. The former should never be criminalised, whereas the latter requires evidence-based measures to end sexual violence in all its forms," he said.