17/05/2026
On May 17, the world celebrates the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Transphobia and Interphobia — , or IDAHO Day and its first name.
IDAHO Day itself was launched in 2004 by French scientist and activist Louis-Georges Ten together with the international IDAHO Committee — a coalition of human rights and LGBTIQ+ organizations created to coordinate campaigns against homophobia in different countries of the world.
It was on this day in 1990 that the World Health Organization excluded homos*xuality from the International Classification of Diseases. This decision became an important turning point in the international approach to human rights: homos*xuality officially ceased to be considered a pathology.
Before this, LGBTIQ+ people in many countries were subjected to forced “treatment” for decades, including psychiatric non-working practices, including electroshock therapy and chemical castration (most often this was forced “treatment” with injections of female hormones for men).
One of the most famous examples is the story of British mathematician Alan Turing, who made a critical contribution to deciphering the N**i Enigma during World War II. After being convicted of homos*xuality, he was forced to undergo hormone “therapy” with female hormones, after which he committed su***de.
It is also important that international medical approaches continue to change. In the ICD-11, the latest revision of the International Classification of Diseases from 2019, the revision that the Ukrainian Ministry of Health plans to implement in 2027, transgenderism was also excluded from the list of mental disorders.
Today, IDAHOBIT is not only a symbolic date, but also a reminder that human rights are not an “automatic” process. Even in European countries, the level of protection of LGBTIQ+ people varies significantly — and this is clearly visible on the Rainbow Map from ILGA-Europe (https://rainbowmap.ilga-europe.org/countries/ukraine), which annually assesses legislation and state policies in the field of equality and non-discrimination.
In 2026, Ukraine ranked 41st out of 49 European countries with a score of 18.76%. Ukraine still has zero progress on issues of family rights, hate crimes and hate speech, the right to asylum, and the protection of inters*x people.
Against this background, the advancement of the draft law of the new Civil Code No. 15150 looks particularly worrying, some provisions of which not only do not bring Ukraine closer to European standards, but also create risks of narrowing existing rights and freedoms.
That is why today, representatives of LGBTIQ+ organizations, the human rights sector, and civil society are taking to the streets not only to remind us of the existence of LGBTIQ+ people in Ukraine.
It is also a fundamental question: can a state that declares European integration and distancing itself from the russian authoritarian space simultaneously promote legislative initiatives that create new mechanisms of discrimination, erode the principle of legal certainty, and undermine human rights?
Human rights are not an “additional block” for after the war. They are one of the basic characteristics of the state we are fighting for today.
In solidarity with Офіс Ради Європи в Україні - Київ, Human Rights First, People in Need Ukraine, Center for Disaster Philanthropy, Luxembourg Aid & Development, Fondation de France, ILGA-Europe, ILGA World, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, @читачі
