During the Adobe Summit Amal Clooney, who was truly inspirational, talked about how they’re trying to use data to build a ‘justice index’ showing the quality of the justice system and laws in each country and how they change over time. The idea is that by being able to track this they would attempt to take action against countries where this measure was starting to decline.

While not part of this project there’s a really interesting tool that’s been developed by the World Justice Project, not to be confused with DC Comics Justice Leauge! The tool shows the quality of the justice system in each county as a map visualisation here, they have far more detailed radar graphs by county here which you can click in to and see even more detail on.

Something I find quite powerful when talking to people who aren’t aware is as of March 2019 it is still illegal to be gay in 70 countries! There are currently 6 UN Member States that impose the death penalty on consensual same-sex sexual acts, and a further five States where such a punishment is technically possible. In 26 other countries the maximum penalty can vary between 10 years to a life imprisonment.

As a result there are many places I’m not willing to travel due the the risk I would face, places such as Dubai I could be sentenced to death and places like the Caribbean I could be sentenced to life in prison. I also wouldn’t risk travelling to places like Russia, Turkey or Egypt where I have no legal rights. The map below highlights as of March 2019 the legal status for LGBT rights around the world.

ILGA_Sexual_Orientation_Laws_Map_2019-1