Outright launches important reports on LGBTQ rights in every country

Advocacy organization aims to fill the gap left by cancellation of US reporting on LGBTQ rights

The LGBTIQ advocacy group Outright International is stepping up to fill the void created by President Trump’s cancellation of reporting on the status of queer people’s human rights by releasing its own set of country overview reports, highlighting the progress and challenges queer people face in every country around the world.

The Trump administration has halted the practice of compiling country-by-country reports on the status of LGBTQ rights as part of congressionally required international human right reports. The rights reports have traditionally appeared each year in April or May, but the Trump administration has not yet unveiled its versions of the country reports that the Biden administration prepared in January. Publication of those reports was blocked after Trump took office.

“Anticipating this lacuna that sets U.S. human rights reporting more than 30 years back, Outright is pleased to launch our new Country Overviews on the human rights and inclusion of people of diverse sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, and sex characteristics,” Outright International says in a press release.

Those new reports are typically much more succinct than what the State Department previously produced. For example, here is Outright International’s overview of Ghana:

Ghana bans same-sex relations under Section 104(1)(b) of the Criminal Offences Act of 1960. Although this law is rarely enforced, its existence legitimizes widespread antipathy towards LGBTIQ people and contributes to their harassment and extortion at the hands of authorities. Following a constitutional challenge to this colonial-era law, the court in 2024 declined to decriminalize same-sex intimacy in a ruling riddled with queerphobic language.

In February 2024, the Ghanaian Parliament passed the anti-LGBTQ “Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill.” Although the law does not specifically address intersex persons, there are reports of the murder of intersex infants, as well as bullying and other forms of violence against intersex children. The law faced challenges mounted in the court system, with a disappointing decision by the Supreme Court in December 2024 allowing the bill to proceed despite legitimate claims of its unconstitutionality. However, the then-president of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, did not sign the bill, leaving the law in limbo and demonstrating the battles between the executive and judiciary branches regarding anti-LGBTIQ legislation. The new administration of John Mahama has sent mixed messages as to whether it will support this law. If enacted, the law will institute increased penalties for “aggravated homosexuality” and prohibit LGBTQ advocacy, allyship, and other acts, such as renting property to LGBTQ people.

*Outright research indicates that the bodily autonomy of intersex people is not respected and protected in this country.

In contrast, the discussion of LGBTQ rights in Ghana in the State Department’s 2023 human rights report was an eight-paragraph subsection entitled “Acts of Violence, Criminalization, and Other Abuses Based on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity or Expression, or Sex Characteristics.”

Outright says thieir new reporting is a valuable too for LGBTIQ advocacy.

“States that are the subject of critical reporting are under pressure to do better. The reports help inform foreign policy decisions, including regarding the allocation of foreign aid and security assistance, and guide diplomatic engagement with other countries. Refugee agencies rely on the reports in considering asylum applications. Civil society organizations and activists use the reports to raise awareness and advocate for change,” Outright says in a press release.

Like the ongoing 76Crimes tally of 65 nations with anti-homosexuality laws, Outright International’s overviews supplement other compilations of international information about LGBTQ rights. Outright’s announcement of the new reports acknowledges those alternative sources of information:

In producing our Country Overviews, Outright is standing on the shoulders of giants. Like many in the movement, we’re practically addicted to ILGA World’s brilliant, comprehensive legal database. We’re also building on the LGBTIQ country reporting work of Human Dignity Trust, Human Rights Watch, ILGA Europe, the Equaldex knowledge base, and countless national organizations. We hope that our own contribution will complement others and be of service to LGBTIQ activists, mainstream human rights organizations, media outlets, and government officials anywhere in the world who still want to do right by our communities.

Below is the full announcement of Outright International’s new country overviews:

We Tell Our Truths: Outright’s New LGBTIQ Country Overviews Are a Community Resource and a Reality Check

For all its flaws, the United States government long had some credibility when it came to human rights. This credibility came with limits, contradictions, and blatant hypocrisies, of course. The U.S. exempted itself from key treaties on women’s rights, children’s rights, economic rights, and international criminal justice. It started and funded unjust wars and frequently turned a blind eye to abuses by its economic and geopolitical allies.

Yet despite these failings, people suffering human rights violations around the world could often count on the U.S. government to speak up on their behalf. This included ethnic and religious minorities, embattled journalists and political opposition activists, torture survivors, and, in recent years, those facing violence and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics.

One manifestation of the U.S. advancement of human rights has been the State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, which are released each spring and have covered every UN member state since 1979. As the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies recounts, “The United States was a vanguard for human rights reporting. The reports were among the first of their kind, paving the way for additional human rights documentation by the UN and internationally recognized human rights organizations.”

2025 marks at least thirty years during which the human rights reports have at least sporadically raised concern regarding human rights violations based on sexual orientation. The 1995 Russia report, for instance, found that “Police, labor camp, and prison officials harass and abuse persons on the basis of sexual orientation,” while the 1996 Brazil report condemned “violence against homosexuals.” By 2006, the reports began to acknowledge abuses based on gender identity, referencing to murders of transgender people in Honduras. Finally, beginning in 2010, former U.S. president Barack Obama’s administration mandated the inclusion in every country report of a section on discrimination and violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Embassy officials around the world were instructed to reach out to civil society organizations to gather information on abuses, contributing to a flowering of communication and exchange between U.S. diplomats and our global queer communities.

The visibility and inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) communities in the human rights reports continued under the first presidency of Donald Trump, with a notable first reference to violations against intersex people in the 2018 report in Germany, and in 2022, under Joe Biden’s presidency, the reports began systematically covering violations based on sex characteristics. They also included positive developments impacting LGBTIQ people. Last year’s Country Reports preface cited “important progress” in 2023 for members of marginalized and minority communities: “Kenya affirmed that freedom of expression and of assembly extend to LGBTQI+ persons. Japan enacted a bill to promote understanding of LGBTQI+ issues. LGBTQI+ persons in Estonia and Slovenia now benefit from legislation recognizing marriage equality.”

Country reports on the human rights of LGBTIQ people are not designed to grow dusty on shelves. States that are the subject of critical reporting are under pressure to do better. The reports help inform foreign policy decisions, including regarding the allocation of foreign aid and security assistance, and guide diplomatic engagement with other countries. Refugee agencies rely on the reports in considering asylum applications. Civil society organizations and activists use the reports to raise awareness and advocate for change.

Fast forward to mid-May of 2025, well beyond the usual publication date of the human rights reports, and they are nowhere to be seen. Draft country chapters assiduously prepared by foreign service officers at the tail end of the Biden administration are reportedly being rewritten to cover the absolute minimum required by law, in order to better suit the new Trump administration’s limited “human rights” worldview. The sections covering violence and discrimination against LGBTIQ people were, without doubt, one of the first casualties. The Trump administration denies trans and intersex people’s existence; even discussion of “gender” and “sexuality” is now taboo.

Anticipating this lacuna that sets U.S. human rights reporting more than 30 years back, Outright is pleased to launch our new Country Overviews on the human rights and inclusion of people of diverse sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, and sex characteristics. While we have included overviews of some countries on our website in the past, for the first time, we are taking a tip from the State Department and reporting on every UN member state, as well as a few noteworthy countries that are not member states, such as Palestine and the Vatican. Our Country Overviews expand beyond the events of 2024, covering a range of significant developments in recent years. The extent of our coverage varies: for some countries, we are limited to reporting on matters of official law and policy, while in other cases our global researchers, programs staff, and network of partners have produced knowledge that allows us to offer deeper insights and cutting-edge analysis on relevant developments.

From our country overviews, you’ll follow Argentina’s regression on LGBTIQ people’s rights since the election of Javier Milei, countered by Brazil’s impressive progress on LGBTIQ political participation. You’ll learn about Burkina Faso’s adoption of a draft law in July 2024 that would criminalize homosexuality, and catch up on court rulings in 2024 that decriminalized same-sex sex in Namibia but upheld colonial-era sodomy laws in Ghana and Malawi. You’ll celebrate an important August 2024 legal victory in Australia, in which the Federal Court affirmed that trans people are protected from gender identity discrimination under the country’s Sex Discrimination Act, and you’ll get an update on Sweden’s new gender identity law, which allows trans people to change their legal gender markers on the basis of self-determination. You will discover that the Thai legislature did not only pass marriage equality last year: it also considered several draft bills on legal gender recognition, including at least one that also addresses harmful intersex genital mutilation. You will be inspired to learn that even in the face of armed conflict, LBQ women in Sudan are collaborating with feminist movements to collectively challenge patriarchal and heteronormative ideologies.

In producing our Country Overviews, Outright is standing on the shoulders of giants. Like many in the movement, we’re practically addicted to ILGA World’s brilliant, comprehensive legal database. We’re also building on the LGBTIQ country reporting work of Human Dignity Trust, Human Rights Watch, ILGA Europe, the Equaldex knowledge base, and countless national organizations. We hope that our own contribution will complement others and be of service to LGBTIQ activists, mainstream human rights organizations, media outlets, and government officials anywhere in the world who still want to do right by our communities.

We launch these overviews as an offering to commemorate the 2025 International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexphobia, and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT). The theme of this year’s IDAHOBIT is “The Power of Community.” Indeed, one lesson of 2025 is that we cannot count on governments to have our backs: even in the best of times, many political actors are fickle fair-weather friends, driven by interests that don’t necessarily align with ours, and they rarely center human rights. State Department Human Rights Reports may come and go, along with other forms of government support. Whatever the political currents, we must keep us safe – and we must report on our own realities.

Visit Outright International for more information.