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.