Epress.am News from Armenia
More than 2.7 billion people live in countries where being gay is punishable by imprisonment, lashes or even death, according to an annual report issued by the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) on the eve of the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia on May 17.
The report shows that there is not a single country where LGBT people enjoy equal legal rights with their heterosexual counterparts.
Five countries — Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen — still have a statutory death penalty for homosexuality, while a further 71 countries punish same-sex couples with lesser sentences of imprisonment or corporal punishment.
More than 1.3 billion people, however, live in countries with some form of legal protection against discrimination against LGBT people, while 780 million live in countries with same-sex marriage or civil unions. More than a billion people live in countries which bar workplace discrimination against LGBT people.
As in the past, this year too Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Russia were among the top ten worst countries in terms of protecting the rights of the LGBT community. In these countries, LGBT people are not legally protected in the workplace, and there are no clear laws on the protection from hate speech, as well as same-sex marriage and the adoption of children.
In this region, only Georgia legally protects members of the LGBT community from discrimination in the workplace and hate speech. At the same time, the report notes that there are no clear laws on same-sex marriage and the adoption of children.