Human rights in Benin citizens?" The report called on Benin to "[d]ecriminalize sexual relations between consenting, same-sex individuals and establish educational programs and appropriate policies for police that promote the personal security of all Benin citizens regardless of sexual orientation". It is illegal to discriminate against people based on HIV status, and overt instances of such discrimination are reportedly not frequent. There is no majority ethnic group in Benin. A range of ethnic groups is represented in the public sector. There is a system for protecting refugees, of which the country held about 7,300 at the end of 2010, most of them from Togo.
Human rights in Benin that year, Kérékou lost to Nicéphore Soglo and accepted the results of the vote. He was returned to power in the 1996 elections and re-elected in 2001; the 2006 elections, in which Kérékou did not run, was considered free and fair. Increasingly since 1991, Benin has been generally regarded as having considerably higher human-rights standards than most other African countries. It has been written that Benin "appears to be one of the leading democracies in Africa", but that the many human rights NGOs in the country, which date back to the transitional period, "do not network among themselves", so that