Homosexuality is now illegal in 65 nations
South Pacific nation Niue decriminalizes homosexuality
Human Dignity Trust, an organization that works to challenge anti-homosexuality laws in courts around the world, has reported that the tiny South Pacific nation Niue, a part of the Realm of New Zealand, repealed its laws banning same-sex intimacy in May 2024. Niue inherited its buggery laws from the British and New Zealand colonial administrations but repealed those laws by an act of its local parliament.
The slow, decades-long progress toward recognition of the human rights of LGBTQ people has encountered a setback with the March 2025 decision by the Trinidad and Tobago Court of Appeal to reinstate that country’s laws against homosexuality, and the early 2025 adoption of a new homophobic penal code by the West African nation of Mali.
Before those reversals, the number of nations with laws against gay sex had fallen to 63 from more than 90 at the beginning of the 2000s. The latest countries to end the criminalization of same-sex intimacy are Namibia in Africa, Niue in the South Pacific, and Dominica in the Caribbean in 2024, Mauritius in the Indian Ocean and the Cook Islands in the South Pacific in 2023, following in the footsteps of Singapore in Southeast Asia, Antigua & Barbuda, Saint Kitts & Nevis, and Barbados in the Caribbean — all in 2022.
For more information, see the Erasing 76 Crimes page “List of 65 countries where homosexuality is illegal.” There you will find:
- A full list of nations with anti-homosexuality laws.
- Recent history of many nations repealing or overturning those laws and a few nations newly adopting them.
- A comparison of this site’s list with the similar list compiled by ILGA, the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association.
