Homosexuality is now illegal in 66 nations
The latest nation to adopt an anti-gay law is Niger in West Africa.
In adopting an anti-gay law on June 11, 2026, the West African nation of Niger strengthened a wave of anti-homosexuality legislation and proposed legislation in Africa that has reversed, at least temporarily, the slow decrease in the number of nations with anti-gay laws.
Previously, its neighbors Burkina Faso and Mali criminalized homosexuality in 2025. Together with a March 2025 decision by the Trinidad and Tobago Court of Appeal to reinstate that country’s laws against homosexuality, these countries have turned back a wave a progress on decriminalization.
Niger’s new anti-LGBTQ law comes in the wake of Senegal’s enactment of a law in March that provides for up to 10 years in prison for gay sex and the Ghana parliament’s approval of a bill last month that, if approved by Ghana’s president, would imprison people for up to three years if they “identify” as LGBTQ.
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 St. Lucia in 2025; Namibia, Niue, and Dominica in 2024; Mauritius and the Cook Islands in 2023; and Singapore, Antigua & Barbuda, Saint Kitts & Nevis, and Barbados in 2022.
For more information, see the Erasing 76 Crimes page “List of 66 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.
