In 2025, it’s hard to believe — and even harder to swallow — that being queer is still considered a crime in 65 countries and territories around the world. That’s right: holding hands, falling in love, or just existing openly can put you behind bars, get you flogged, or even killed in parts of the globe. While a few nations like Namibia have moved toward equality, others — like Mali and Trinidad and Tobago — have taken tragic steps backward, reinforcing the criminalisation of LGBTQ+ lives.
The list, updated by the Human Dignity Trust, paints a grim picture for queer communities living under state-sanctioned discrimination. In countries like Iran, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia, queer people face the death penalty. In places like Brunei, Nigeria, and Malaysia, the law allows caning, imprisonment, or hard labor. Even in countries where the laws are “rarely enforced,” the mere existence of these archaic codes enables harassment, blackmail, and violence — often with police complicity.
Colonial Ghosts Still Haunt Queer Lives
What do many of these countries have in common? A brutal colonial legacy. British colonialism exported homophobia by embedding anti-sodomy laws into penal codes across its vast empire. More than half of the countries criminalising LGBTQ+ identities today can trace these laws directly to Britain — a grim inheritance of hate.
Alistair Stewart of the Human Dignity Trust explained that many of these legal relics “were imposed over diverse indigenous traditions where same-sex activity and gender diversity were not necessarily taboo.” In fact, in many pre-colonial cultures, queerness wasn’t a problem — until European powers made it one. The irony? The former colonisers are now holding Pride parades while queer folks in their ex-colonies hide in fear.
And it’s not just history books we’re talking about. In real time, this legal discrimination manifests in arrests, torture, and murder. In Uganda, LGBTQ+ people face life in prison. In Indonesia, vague morality laws are wielded as weapons. And in Gaza, while enforcement may be rare, reports of killings under Hamas rule suggest an even graver danger.
Queerness Is Not a Crime — Silence Is
Even where laws aren’t enforced, the damage is done. Julia Ehrt of ILGA World points out that “criminalisation keeps people from building community,” cutting them off from safety, love, and basic human dignity. “Many LGBTQ+ people have to be in hiding,” she said, underscoring how the closet becomes a prison when backed by law.
The international LGBTQ+ community isn’t taking this lightly. Activists around the globe are demanding accountability — not just from offending governments, but from former colonisers who bear historic responsibility. As Ehrt and Stewart argue, the UK and others must support grassroots decriminalisation efforts — not by bulldozing in with white savior complexes, but by amplifying voices on the ground.
And we — queers with passports, platforms, and privileges — have a role too. Donate, protest, vote, educate. Because Pride doesn’t end in June, and it certainly doesn’t end at your border.
It’s 2025, and queer people are still being hunted for love, for identity, for being fabulous and alive. The closet is no place for anyone — especially not under threat of a state-issued death sentence. We see you. We fight for you. And we won’t stop until every closet door is blown off the hinges.
Because in 65 countries, it’s not just “illegal to be gay.” It’s a crime to be yourself. And that is the real obscenity.