ILGA World Database

Research That Powers Change

From June to September 2026, the ILGA World Database remained one of the world’s most important public resources for LGBTI advocacy. Activists, lawyers, journalists, researchers, policymakers, UN experts, and human rights defenders rely on it to understand how laws and policies affect people of diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, gender expressions, and sex characteristics.

This reporting period showed why accessible, reliable, and regularly updated data matters. The Database supported United Nations advocacy, informed media reporting, shaped tailored policy briefings, strengthened public narratives, and helped turn complex legal and policy developments into usable knowledge for movements around the world.

Explore the ILGA World Database [https://database.ilga.org/en]

Welcoming a New Research Manager

A major milestone during this period was the hiring of Lara Fergus as ILGA World’s new Research Manager. This strengthens ILGA World’s research and knowledge production programme at a critical time.

As the Database, Monitor, and wider research outputs continue to expand, strong research leadership is essential. The Research Manager role will help guide quality assurance, improve coordination across research processes, support strategic publications, and ensure that ILGA World’s data remains rigorous, accessible, ethical, and useful for movements in every region.

This investment in people is just as important as investment in technology. Behind every Database update is careful human judgement: researchers verify sources, review legal developments, understand local context, and translate technical information into accessible analysis.

Updating the Global Legal Picture

During 2026, ILGA World continued maintaining both the Database and the ILGA World Monitor, while mobilising support from partners including BMZ and UNDP for research and knowledge work. Despite a difficult funding environment, the research team prioritised timely monitoring and Database updates.

By 31 August, the team had confirmed 106 formal legal updates across 41 jurisdictions. Using a broader monitoring and validation measure, ILGA World approved, analysed, and registered legal developments from 98 countries and 5 territories or special jurisdictions, covering 103 unique jurisdictions. Active monitoring sources were reported across 240 jurisdictions.

These updates covered core legal areas tracked in the Database, including criminalisation of consensual same-sex sexual acts [https://database.ilga.org/criminalisation-consensual-same-sex-sexual-acts], legal barriers to freedom of expression and association, anti-discrimination protections, hate crime laws, regulation of so-called “conversion therapies”, same-sex unions, restrictions on interventions on intersex minors, and legal gender recognition.

From Monitoring to Practical Advocacy

The Database and Monitor are not only repositories. They are tools that help people act.

From January to August 2026, ILGA World documented 18 analytical, advocacy, and dissemination outputs using ILGA monitoring data. Thirteen of these were completed from April to August. They included legal trend briefings, analysis of Niger’s new Penal Code, research support on conversion therapy bills in the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom, training for Australian pro bono lawyers, media engagement with El Espectador, and public content on Spain’s conversion therapy bill.

The team also produced four Pride and LGBTQIA+ engagement briefings and risk products in June. These translated legal and policy monitoring into practical guidance for responsible external engagement in contexts including Poland, Romania, Hungary, and a cross-country risk overview. The briefings centred local movement leadership, informed consent, safety, non-discrimination, access to healthcare, digital and physical security, and the need to avoid engagement that shifts risk onto local LGBTQIA+ organisations.

This is what evidence-based advocacy looks like: data becoming guidance, guidance becoming safer decisions, and safer decisions supporting communities on the ground.

Exploring AI With Human Review

This period also marked important progress in ILGA World’s exploration of AI-supported research workflows. From April to August, ILGA World and Baobab Tech moved from technical mobilisation into controlled development and testing of AI-supported processing. The work focused on strengthening the Automated Source Processing Unit workflow while keeping human review as the control point.

By 31 August, AI-supported components were not yet live for researchers, but controlled testing had produced promising results. Over one month of testing, 12,553 candidate items passed through the experimental pipeline. AI-assisted clustering grouped related items correctly in 90.8 per cent of cases, compared with 70.4 per cent for the existing rules. The test reduced estimated manual corrections from 2,979 to 2,014 items per month, meaning 965 fewer manual corrections. External signal monitoring also surfaced 1,794 relevant stories not captured by existing alerts, a 22 per cent increase in the test period.

This matters because ILGA World researchers review large volumes of material, including hostile, distressing, and anti-rights content. Used responsibly, AI can reduce repetitive work and improve source discovery. But human oversight remains essential. ILGA World’s approach keeps researcher verification, contextual judgement, and editorial accountability at the centre.

Reaching Wider Audiences

The Database continued to shape public debate. From April to August, ILGA World’s communications press review tracked 1,249 media items, of which 455 explicitly quoted the ILGA World Database. Across January to August, the tracker included 1,693 media items, with 517 explicit Database references recorded from February onwards.

Website analytics also showed strong public use. From 1 April to 31 August, the Database recorded approximately 75,000 unique users, 198,000 visits, and 576,000 events.

These figures show that the Database is reaching far beyond ILGA World’s internal work. Media, civil society, researchers, and wider public audiences are using it to find reliable information in a rapidly changing legal and political environment.

Building the Next Phase

Looking ahead, ILGA World will continue moving AI-supported workflows from controlled development towards researcher-facing use, while retaining clear human oversight. Next steps include identifying jurisdictions, thematic tagging, researcher review mechanisms, document-level extraction for research-heavy sources, and performance dashboards that track accuracy, workload, and override rates.

ILGA World will also continue developing Database communications and dissemination work, including campaign planning, communication assets, and wider rollout in 2027, subject to continued or complementary funding.

Why Your Support Matters

Your support through GlobalGiving helps keep the ILGA World Database free, accessible, accurate, and useful. It supports the people and systems behind the data: researchers, legal reviewers, editors, technical infrastructure, communications, and public-facing tools.

By supporting the ILGA World Database, you are funding the evidence behind global equality work. You are helping activists challenge harmful laws, journalists report accurately, lawyers prepare stronger arguments, policymakers understand gaps, and communities advocate for change with information they can trust.

Thank you for helping make facts matter.

Explore the ILGA World Database [https://database.ilga.org/en]
Explore the ILGA World Monitor [https://monitor.ilga.org]

Links:

• ILGA World Database