Rainbow Europe Map and Index 2011

On 17 May, the International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia is being marked. Every year on this day ILGA-Europe looks at progress made by European countries towards respecting human rights and ensuring full legal equality of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people (LGBT) by publishing Rainbow Europe Map and Index.

The main trends observed this year are that:

• None of the countries in Europe can claim to provide for full legal equality for LGBT people. Every country in Europe still has work to do to achieve LGBT equality – even those which scored the highest on the Index (the United Kingdom (12,5 points) or Sweden and Spain (12 points))
• 14 countries (including 1 EU Member State) are in the ‘red zone’: gross violations of human rights and discrimination are taking place
• There are significant variations between countries in Europe: while some have progressed in the past year (e.g. Germany, Portugal), many others are not advancing towards greater recognition of rights (e.g. Cyprus, Italy, Latvia, Malta, Turkey, Ukraine), while in others (e.g. Lithuania, Hungary) we observe the risks of regress
• Many EU Member States are either around or below average when it comes to respecting human rights and ensuring legal equality of LGBT people. This is particularly worrying considering that the overall European average is very poor.

ILGA-Europe’s Rainbow Europe Map and Index rates each European country’s laws and administrative practices according to 24 categories and ranks them on a scale between 17 (highest score: respect of human rights and full legal equality of LGBT people) and -7 (lowest score: gross violations of human rights and discrimination of LGBT people). This is the first time the Map and the Index reflect categories on issues affecting trans people.