It is important to note that legality of same-sex sexual acts cannot be read as evidence of a safer living environment for people with diverse sexual orientations or gender identities or expressions. In many of the States where consensual same-sex sexual acts are legal, social stigmatisation of people who are perceived as non-heterosexual or non-cisgender remains alarmingly high. In fact, in many of them, early decriminalisation dates can be explained by historical reasons completely unrelated to activism or lower hostility towards non-heterosexual forms of sexuality.

Information on enforcement of these provisions in each criminalising country can be found in the last column (“Enforcement”) of the chart below. This data comes from ILGA World’s report “Our Identities under Arrest”.

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