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What you should know about this indicator

  • This data comes from the LGBTI National Policy Dataset, compiled by Kristopher Velasco at Princeton University. It tracks the adoption, scope, and enforcement of 27 LGBTI-related policies across 195 countries, with annual data starting in 1991.
  • The indicator is coded as follows: No death penalty (no law makes consensual same-sex sexual acts punishable by death), Varies by region (application differs between subnational jurisdictions) and Death penalty applies (a law makes consensual same-sex sexual acts punishable by death).
  • The dataset counts policies established by binding legal instruments — statutes, constitutional provisions, decrees and regulations with the force of law, and binding court rulings. Where no law governs a policy, a written rule that does can count too, such as a health-authority guideline, a blood service's donor questionnaire or a religious ruling. Bills, ministerial statements and non-binding declarations are not counted.
  • In this data, a country has the death penalty for consensual same-sex acts when a penal-code article, a decree, or a religious (sharia) provision makes them punishable by death, whether or not that provision is written into a code (as in Saudi Arabia). Where only some states' penal codes allow it, as in parts of Nigeria, the country is classified as Varies by region. Death-penalty provisions that apply only to acts committed by force, bills that never became law, and statements by officials don't count. Pakistan, Somalia, and the United Arab Emirates are classified as having no death penalty in 2025.
Same-sex sexual acts punished by death
Velasco
Whether the law makes consensual same-sex sexual acts punishable by death.
Source
Velasco (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
July 15, 2026
Next expected update
July 2027
Date range
1991–2025

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Velasco – LGBTI National Policy Dataset

The LGBTI National Policy Dataset (Version 3.0) is a country-year-policy panel tracking the adoption, scope, and enforcement of LGBTI-related policies across 195 countries from 1991 to 2025. The dataset is distributed in long format: each row records one country in one year for one specific policy-status combination, with the share of the population covered, the adoption and implementation years, the policy's descriptors (penalty, fine, sexes covered, scope, enforcement), up to twelve source citations and a confidence rating. It is designed for use in comparative political research, policy diffusion analysis, and quantitative cross-national studies of LGBTI rights.

The dataset covers 27 distinct policy areas organized into 54 policy-status combinations (each policy paired with two mutually exclusive status directions). Of these 54 combinations, 36 contain substantive data; the remaining 18 are structural placeholders with all-zero values, included to maintain a fully balanced panel suitable for econometric methods.

Retrieved on
October 19, 2026
Retrieved from
https://osf.io/wta9p/overview
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Velasco, Kristopher. 2026. "LGBTI National Policy Dataset, Version 3.0." https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/WTA9P.

The LGBTI National Policy Dataset (Version 3.0) is a country-year-policy panel tracking the adoption, scope, and enforcement of LGBTI-related policies across 195 countries from 1991 to 2025. The dataset is distributed in long format: each row records one country in one year for one specific policy-status combination, with the share of the population covered, the adoption and implementation years, the policy's descriptors (penalty, fine, sexes covered, scope, enforcement), up to twelve source citations and a confidence rating. It is designed for use in comparative political research, policy diffusion analysis, and quantitative cross-national studies of LGBTI rights.

The dataset covers 27 distinct policy areas organized into 54 policy-status combinations (each policy paired with two mutually exclusive status directions). Of these 54 combinations, 36 contain substantive data; the remaining 18 are structural placeholders with all-zero values, included to maintain a fully balanced panel suitable for econometric methods.

Retrieved on
October 19, 2026
Retrieved from
https://osf.io/wta9p/overview
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Velasco, Kristopher. 2026. "LGBTI National Policy Dataset, Version 3.0." https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/WTA9P.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline
Notes on our processing step for this indicator

From the original dataset's single-direction proportion (0 = no policy, 1 = fully implemented, intermediate values = partial subnational adoption), we coded countries into three categories: the substantive direction in effect, partial subnational implementation ("Varies by region"), or no policy in effect.

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Same-sex sexual acts punished by death”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre and Pablo Arriagada (2023) - “LGBT+ Rights”. Data adapted from Velasco. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261029-104738/grapher/same-sex-sexual-acts-punished-by-death.html [online resource] (archived on October 29, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Velasco (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Velasco (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Same-sex sexual acts punished by death – Velasco” [dataset]. Velasco, “LGBTI National Policy Dataset 3.0” [original data]. Retrieved October 29, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261029-104738/grapher/same-sex-sexual-acts-punished-by-death.html (archived on October 29, 2026).

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