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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 index combines 35 measures drawn from the dataset's 27 policy areas — 23 that expand rights (such as marriage equality, protections from discrimination, or legal gender recognition) and 12 that restrict them (such as the criminalization of same-sex acts, the death penalty, "propaganda" laws, or military service bans). Measures that expand rights add to the score; measures that restrict them subtract from it.
  • Each measure scores between 0 and 1, depending on how strongly it operates in practice. Its score is the share of the population it covers, multiplied by the average of its other features — how broad it is, whether it is actually enforced, and, where they apply, whether it covers all genders, how severe its punishments are, and how easy the right is to use.
  • In practice this means a law that exists on paper but is never enforced counts less than one that is actively applied, and a right that requires surgery counts less than one available by self-declaration.
  • Higher values indicate more rights-affirming legal environments; negative values indicate that restrictive laws dominate. In 2025, country values range from about −4.5 (Uganda) to 20.3 (Malta).
  • 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.
LGBT+ Rights Index
Velasco
Summary measure of a country's LGBTI-related laws, calculated by subtracting the sum of its regressive policy scores from the sum of its progressive policy scores.
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. 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. 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

Values for world regions are population-weighted averages of the countries in each region, computed by Our World in Data using our region definitions, the World Bank's income group classification, and our consolidated population data. Country values come directly from the producer.

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: LGBT+ Rights Index”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre and Pablo Arriagada (2023) - “LGBT+ Rights”. Data adapted from Velasco. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261102-112946/grapher/lgbt-rights-index.html [online resource] (archived on November 2, 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. “LGBT+ Rights Index – Velasco” [dataset]. Velasco, “LGBTI National Policy Dataset 3.0” [original data]. Retrieved November 2, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261102-112946/grapher/lgbt-rights-index.html (archived on November 2, 2026).

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