In June 2026, ILGA World counted 65 UN member states that still criminalize consensual same-sex sexual acts. The death penalty is the prescribed penalty in 7; in 5 more there is no full legal certainty. Those figures are the headline. The plot is older.
Section 377 and friends
Thomas Macaulay’s Indian Penal Code (1860) included Section 377: carnal intercourse “against the order of nature.” The phrase is theology in a clerk’s handwriting. Britain planted versions of it across the empire. That is why a Jamaican buggery clause, a Kenyan “order of nature” felony, and a Bangladeshi 377 can look like cousins at a reunion. They are.
India’s Supreme Court read 377 down for consensual adults in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India (2018). Singapore’s parliament repealed 377A in 2022. Botswana’s courts, Namibia’s High Court (2024), Mauritius (2023), Dominica (2024), Barbados (2022), and Saint Lucia (2025) belong on the same list of late colonial cleanups. The Caribbean was, for a long time, the hemisphere’s holdout belt. It is not, uniformly, anymore.
The count went up
For almost a decade the global number fell. In 2025 it rose. Burkina Faso introduced a criminalising law for the first time. Trinidad and Tobago reversed a decriminalisation ruling. Mali and, in 2026 reporting, Niger adopted new prohibitions. Senegal tightened what it already had. ILGA’s Pride 2026 briefing is the source to cite; we are not going to pretend a static site is a live satellite.
Death-penalty jurisdictions
A handful of states prescribe death for some same-sex sexual acts — Iran in the penal code, Saudi Arabia in uncodified practice, Brunei’s sharia penal code among the documented cases. Several Nigerian states applying certain sharia codes, plus statutes such as Uganda’s 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act, belong in any honest “worst paper” column. Enforcement varies. The text is not a metaphor.
Europe’s ghost numbers
France quietly dropped sodomy from the Revolutionary criminal code in 1791. The United Kingdom took until 1967 (England and Wales) and later for Scotland and Northern Ireland. Germany’s Paragraph 175 — Nazi enforcement, West German afterlife — was fully struck in 1994. Russia decriminalised sodomy in 1993 and spent the 2010s and 2020s building a different machine: propaganda bans, “extremism,” raids. A repealed sodomy clause is not the same thing as a safe country.
For a filterable desk of notable jurisdictions, use the tracker. For the complete professional dataset, use the ILGA World Database, updated through 2026.
Educational material, not a diagnosis, prescription, or legal opinion. Consenting adults only. Laws change; check primary sources and a licensed professional in your jurisdiction. If you are in danger, local emergency services come first.
Free reports
Not for sale, still required reading
- This Alien Legacy: The Origins of “Sodomy” Laws in British Colonialism — Human Rights Watch (2008). How Section 377 packed its bags in London and unpacked them from Delhi to Kampala. ISBN 1-56432-419-2 exists; Amazon does not meaningfully stock it. Read the report where HRW hosts it.
- ILGA World Database (State-Sponsored Homophobia) — ILGA World. The living map of which states still criminalize same-sex intimacy. The old bound 'State-Sponsored Homophobia' surveys live here now, updated, and still free.