What Rights Do LGBTIQ+ People Still Lack?

Inna Iryskina 11.05.2025 Analytical materials

What rights

do LGBTQI+ people

still lack?

The question of why LGBTQI+ people demand anything for themselves, of what it is they still lack, comes up in the public conversation from time to time. Sometimes it comes with accusations — supposedly they already have every right there is, and now they want some special ones on top; sometimes it comes from genuine bewilderment.

To answer it as fully as possible, we need to look at the human rights that belong to all people by the mere fact of their existence, and to compare whether they really are implemented and observed for LGBTQI+ people in the same way as for everyone else – or not. Since the situation varies greatly from country to country, we will focus here specifically on citizens of Ukraine.

Human rights are defined in a range of documents that are in force in Ukraine. Among the international ones these are, above all, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, one of the founding documents of the UN, and the European Convention on Human Rights of 1950, which Ukraine ratified as a member state of the Council of Europe in 1997. The fundamental law of the state, however, is its Constitution, so the state is obliged first and foremost to observe the rights defined there.

That is why Chapter II of the Constitution of Ukraine, “Human and Citizens’ Rights, Freedoms and Duties,” was chosen for this analysis. Below we go through the articles of this chapter that deal specifically with rights. The text quotes only those articles, or fragments of articles, that reveal a difference in the position of LGBTQI+ people compared with other citizens of Ukraine – or, to put it differently, a difference in people’s position depending on their sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression or sex characteristics (SOGIESC).

Article 23

“Every person has the right to free development of his or her personality if the rights and freedoms of other persons are not violated thereby…”

Every personality has a range of different traits and manifestations, and SOGIESC (sexual orientation, gender identity/expression and/or sex characteristics) is among them. Free development of one’s personality means that a person can freely discover these traits in themselves, study them, explore them, disclose them to other people, express them in interaction with others, and safely build their life taking them into account. In a sense, this right lays the foundation that opens the way to exercising a number of other human rights. How possible is that in Ukraine?

On the one hand, Ukrainian law contains no ban on any manifestations related to SOGIESC. The law that criminalized homosexual relationships was repealed back in the very first year of Ukraine’s independence. Later attempts to introduce various restrictions on homosexuality or transgender identity, such as a ban on their “propaganda,” have failed in the Verkhovna Rada.

On the other hand, there is still no actual equality of rights regardless of SOGIESC, because:

State educational curricula contain almost no information on SOGIESC topics. At the same time, everything connected with heterosexuality and cisgender identity is presented as the default baseline, often creating the impression that it is the only option possible. This limits people’s ability in general to learn about different SOGIESC and to explore how they manifest, starting with becoming aware of their own SOGIESC, and it makes the process of self-discovery hardest of all for LGBTQI+ people. On top of that, the lack of such information helps homophobic, biphobic and transphobic myths and stereotypes spread through society and deepens the marginalization of LGBTQI+ people.
The fact that heterosexuality and cisgender identity are precisely what society treats as the “default SOGIESC” also means that for LGBTQI+ people, disclosing their own becomes a separate step (and more often a whole series of such steps) along their life path, which in itself already makes their position unequal. What is more, because of the high level of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in society, such disclosure often carries the risk of rejection, discrimination and even various forms of violence. As a result, unlike cisheterosexual people, LGBTQI+ people have to weigh constantly whether they can come out in a given situation or whether it is safer to refrain from doing so. That, in turn, limits the expression of their personality, from ordinary conversation all the way to their prospects for career advancement.
For transgender people, the development of their personality is also tied to the possibility of undergoing a gender transition. It may include both bodily changes that bring sex characteristics into the form that best matches the person’s gender identity and recognition of that identity in the social and legal spheres. Taken together, all of this makes it possible to live and to fulfill oneself in society in line with one’s own self-understanding, one’s own “I.” Cisgender people, as far as their gender identity is concerned, have that possibility by default, once again. Trans people in Ukraine do have a transition procedure regulated by a number of legal acts, but it remains fairly complicated. In particular, changing the sex marker in the documents that prove a person’s identity and Ukrainian citizenship has medical procedures as a mandatory precondition. Those procedures, in turn, include at a minimum a psychiatric assessment with a diagnosis of “Transsexualism” and hormone replacement therapy. Such obstacles mean that some trans people may not dare to go through with a transition, or may put it off for a long time. In addition, Ukrainian legislation allows changing the sex marker from “male” to “female” or the other way around, but provides for no recognition whatsoever of the gender identity of non-binary people. Their opportunities for developing their personality in Ukraine are therefore even more limited.
For intersex people, the free development of their personality has to take into account their bodily particularities, which differ from typical female or male bodies. Beyond the fact that along their life path they, like other LGBTQI+ people, run into problems caused by the lack of information about intersex variations in society, many of them also go through so-called “normalization” – bringing their bodies into line with a female or male “norm,” usually surgically and in early childhood. Such procedures not only have long-lasting traumatic consequences in themselves, they also mean that the artificially assigned sex may not match the gender identity the person comes to recognize later in life. At the same time, unlike trans people, who at least have an imperfect procedure for medical transition and legal gender recognition in Ukraine, intersex people have no analogous procedure at all today. They are left either to fit themselves into a transition procedure that was never designed for their situation, or to live with that mismatch between identity and body. Genuinely free development of one’s personality is, of course, out of the question under such conditions.

Recommendations:

Include information about the diversity of SOGIESC in state educational curricula and run public information campaigns aimed at reducing homophobia, biphobia and transphobia;
Revise the legal framework governing the gender transition procedure so that its individual components are not rigid, mandatory preconditions for one another;
Develop a transition procedure for intersex people based on the same approach.

Article 24

“Citizens have equal constitutional rights and freedoms and are equal before the law. There shall be no privileges or restrictions based on race, color of skin, political, religious and other beliefs, sex, ethnic and social origin, property status, place of residence, linguistic or other characteristics.”

If we say in general that in the context of human rights there are no “special rights” at stake – in particular for LGBTQI+ people, who often hear that charge directed at them – then there should be no restrictions of rights based on any characteristics either. This article is precisely what rules out restrictions based on one characteristic or another, that is, discrimination. Yet as one can see, SOGIESC do not appear in the list of characteristics it gives. At the same time, that list is not exhaustive: it contains the catch-all “other characteristics,” which may cover them as well.

According to ILGA World data, only 12 countries currently have a constitutional ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation, 5 on gender identity, and none on sex characteristics. So this level of protection, while it is the strongest possible in terms of securing equal rights, is still not very common in the world. At the same time, an open list of protected characteristics leaves room for introducing anti-discrimination provisions covering SOGIESC at other levels of legislation. Let us look at how things stand with that in Ukraine.

The Law “On the Principles of Preventing and Combating Discrimination in Ukraine” includes, in its very definition of discrimination, a list of characteristics that discrimination may concern. This list, although broader than the constitutional one, likewise does not include SOGIESC and is open-ended, closing with “other characteristics.” Practice shows, however, that anything not stated explicitly is usually ignored when the law is applied, and holding someone accountable for discrimination based on a characteristic that falls only implicitly under “other” is far harder.

It is important to note that a ban on discrimination based on SOGIESC would apply to heterosexual and cisgender people just as much – so, once again, this is not about “special rights” for LGBTQI+ people. At the same time, there is ample evidence that it is LGBTQI+ people who face discrimination in Ukraine in employment, education, health care, goods and services, housing and so on. The Nash Svit LGBTQI+ Human Rights Center, in particular, records such data. And in most cases those who committed such discrimination were not held accountable for it.

In recent years anti-discrimination provisions that do name sexual orientation and/or gender identity have gradually appeared in Ukrainian legislation in narrower areas, in particular:

Article 21 of the Labor Code, “Equality of labor rights of citizens of Ukraine, prohibition of discrimination in the sphere of labor,” has contained a ban on such discrimination on the grounds of SOGI since 2015.
Chapter II of the Rules of Ethical Conduct for Police Officers, “Basic requirements for a police officer’s conduct,” adopted in 2016, provides that while performing official duties a police officer must, among other things, “show respect for the dignity of every person and treat everyone fairly and impartially regardless of,” among other characteristics, sexual orientation.
The general provisions of the Procedure for the Provision of Primary Health Care (PHC), approved in 2018, set out the principle of “non-discrimination, which consists in providing PHC services whose quality does not differ depending on sex, sexual orientation” and so on.
Article 11 of the Law on Employment, “The right of a person to protection against manifestations of discrimination in the sphere of employment,” has since 2022 provided for a state-guaranteed right to protection against any manifestations of discrimination in employment, including on the grounds of SOGI.
Article 100 of the Law on the All-Ukrainian Referendum, “Restrictions on campaigning in an all-Ukrainian referendum,” in its 2022 version prohibits, during such campaigning, “distributing in any way materials that contain signs of, or incite, discrimination against or harassment of individuals and groups of individuals” on the grounds of SOGI among others.
Article 8 of the Law on Advertising, “General requirements for advertising,” has since 2023 prohibited “making statements and/or showing images that are discriminatory and/or incite hatred, hostility or cruelty toward individuals or groups of individuals” on the grounds of sexual orientation.
Article 36 of the Law on Media, “Restrictions on the content of information,” has since 2023 prohibited “statements that incite discrimination against or harassment of individuals or groups of individuals” on the grounds of SOGI.
The 2024 Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine “On approving the Procedure for the material, medical, psychological and social provision of service members taking into account the needs of women and men” prohibits discrimination against service members on the grounds of SOGI both during recruitment into military service and while serving.

It is worth noting that what matters is not only the existence of laws in themselves, but also compliance with them. There are problems here too – again, because of the generally high level of homophobia, transphobia and biphobia in society and the low awareness of SOGIESC both among the officials who are supposed to refrain from discrimination and among the law enforcement officers who are supposed to hold violators accountable.

Individual areas will be examined in more detail further on. In general, though, we can state that because of the lack of sufficient protection both from legislation and from the law enforcement system, LGBTQI+ people in Ukraine face certain discriminatory restrictions.

Recommendation

Add sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics to the list of grounds on which discrimination is prohibited by law in Ukraine.

Article 28

“Everyone has the right to respect for his or her dignity. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment that violates his or her dignity.”

Under this article, dignity must be respected equally for all people – and therefore regardless of their SOGIESC as well. In a cisheteronormative society, however, only heterosexual orientation and cisgender identity are regarded as the norm, and everything else as a deviation from it. The consequence is a whole range of behaviors toward LGBTQI+ people that amount, in essence, to punishing them for not conforming to society’s attitudes and expectations. They can be described collectively as “cisheteronormative violence,” which generally manifests at various levels of society – from an LGBTQI+ person’s immediate circle to the state itself.

In Ukraine the state is not directly hostile to LGBTQI+ people at the legislative level, but society as a whole remains largely cisheteronormative. So at every other level LGBTQI+ people may encounter disrespect and humiliation because of their SOGIESC: in the family, in educational institutions, at work, in public space, in various institutions, and online. Below are the forms of cisheteronormative violence connected with the degradation of human dignity that are widespread in Ukraine.

Harassment (bullying, mobbing)

Both LGBTQI+ children and teenagers in educational institutions and older LGBTQI+ people in workplaces and other groups suffer from it. A study conducted in 2019/2020 found, in particular, that almost 70% of LGBTQI+ students had heard homophobic and transphobic comments directed at them, and that two thirds of those came from teachers or school staff. Almost 30% had also experienced physical violence because of their sexual orientation, and slightly fewer because of their gender expression. Overall, about 80% of students do not feel safe at school. A 2019 study conducted among Ukrainian LGBTQI+ service members found that it is above all openly LGBTQI+ service members who face especially brutal homophobia in the form of physical violence, threats and cyberbullying. LGBTQI+ people may also be harassed in workplace settings.

Organized violence

This means violence that organized groups commit systematically against people on the basis of particular characteristics – in our case, on the basis of SOGIESC. In Ukraine these are mostly far-right movements, some of which are the radical wings of right-wing political parties, and they are often affiliated with religious organizations as well. In their activities against LGBTQI+ people they put a number of their rights at risk, which will be discussed in more detail in the sections devoted to the relevant articles. But at the root of it lies precisely the refusal to respect their human dignity. It shows up in degrading statements about LGBTQI+ people – especially online, where they often go unpunished. In physical space such groups also accost LGBTQI+ people, or those they take for LGBTQI+, and try to humiliate and intimidate them, sometimes committing physical violence.

Criminals also sometimes exploit the vulnerability of LGBTQI+ people, subjecting them to blackmail, extortion, assaults and robbery. Offenders assume, consciously or intuitively, that the victims will be afraid of having their SOGIESC exposed and may avoid going to the police altogether. Or that if they do report it, the police, once they learn about the victim’s SOGIESC, will be less inclined to investigate the case properly, and will certainly not treat this as an aggravating circumstance the way they should – which, unfortunately, is often exactly what happens. All of this follows from the cisheteronormativity of society, and specifically from the fact that LGBTQI+ people are not seen within it as deserving the same respect as everyone else.

Conversion therapy

This is an umbrella term for pseudoscientific practices aimed at changing a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression in order to bring it into line with the norms of heterosexuality and/or cisgender identity. The ineffectiveness and harmfulness of such “treatment” has been demonstrated by many studies and acknowledged by many scientific and professional associations at the international and national level. What is more, a number of international organizations, including the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, directly equate conversion therapy with torture and describe its practices as degrading to dignity.

In Ukraine today the use of conversion therapy is not supported by any state documents, but neither is it directly prohibited or restricted. The only exceptions are certain specialized standards, such as the clinical protocol “Gender Dysphoria”, which governs the gender transition procedure and does mention its ineffectiveness and the fact that being transgender and being homosexual are normal phenomena. Meanwhile, conversion therapy practices exist and are applied openly – by religious figures, by some mental health professionals, including an entire association, and by practitioners of “traditional medicine.” According to a 2020 Freedom House survey, two thirds of those who suffer from it are LGBTQI+ teenagers. In 75% of cases conversion therapy is pushed by members of the LGBTQI+ person’s own family – parents, in particular, arrange with doctors to place their children in psychiatric wards for supposed further treatment.

Coercive requirements for gender transition

As already mentioned, in Ukraine a trans person who needs certain medical interventions and/or legal gender recognition (as part, let us recall, of exercising their right to the free development of their personality) must obtain a psychiatric diagnosis of “Transsexualism” in order to do so. The procedure for obtaining it, in turn, requires either two years of outpatient observation by a psychiatrist or two weeks of assessment in a psychiatric inpatient facility. Today there is a consensus in the global medical community that being transgender as such is not a mental disorder, which is reflected in the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), approved in 2019.

The very requirement to obtain a medically unnecessary diagnosis at a psychiatric facility is therefore humiliating. In essence it comes down to a trans person having to prove to a psychiatrist that their sense of themselves, their self-definition, their “I,” is real and not made up. Sometimes this procedure also comes with extortion, blackmail and further humiliation from doctors who abuse the position that gives them power over trans patients. The situation should potentially change once Ukraine implements ICD-11, which will make it possible to remove the mandatory psychiatric assessment from the medical transition procedure. Such implementation is on the Ministry of Health’s agenda, but as of today no specific timeline for it has been set. For now, trans people who need to transition remain in an unequal position when it comes to the right to have their dignity respected.

Normalization surgeries on intersex people

These are usually performed on infants in order to bring their genitals into an unambiguously “female” or “male” form when they are not born with one. That rules out any possibility of the person themselves giving informed consent to such surgery – in other words, the intersex person is not treated as someone who might potentially have their own view on the matter, including one that differs from the doctors’. What is more, children are often later kept in the dark about the surgeries performed on them, which does nothing to help intersex people feel dignified. Or else their genitals are photographed and displayed at medical examinations, which is a degrading practice. Studies show that many intersex people have been shamed within the medical system and subjected to forced treatment, that they were also frequently bullied and, as a result, have mental health problems. All of this applies to Ukraine as well, where such surgeries, while not directly recommended, are not prohibited either, and in practice they are performed and even presented as achievements of a sort.

To sum up this section, LGBTQI+ people encounter disrespect for their dignity in many areas of life. Someone might object that cisheterosexual people can be humiliated, harassed and subjected to violence just as well. In their case, though, such incidents are connected not with their cisgender identity and heterosexuality but with other things, which can affect LGBTQI+ people just as much. So it is precisely the difference in how society treats SOGIESC that creates inequality in how the right to respect for one’s dignity is realized for LGBTQI+ people.

Recommendations:

Introduce and/or strengthen measures against harassment (bullying, mobbing) in schools, in workplaces and online, explicitly recognizing LGBTQI+ people as a group vulnerable to it;
Implement ICD-11 in Ukraine and revise the gender transition procedure so as to remove the mandatory psychiatric assessment from it;
Develop mechanisms to ban so-called conversion therapy and normalization surgeries on intersex children in Ukraine.

Article 34

“Everyone is guaranteed the right to freedom of thought and speech, and to the free expression of his or her views and beliefs.”

As far as LGBTQI+ topics are concerned, the Ukrainian state imposes no restrictions on expressing views and beliefs related to them. Bills banning the so-called propaganda of “homosexualism” and/or “transgenderism” have nonetheless been introduced in the Verkhovna Rada more than once, some of them copied from the analogous law of the russian federation of 2013 (at the time of writing, two such bills remain pending), but none of them has been adopted.

In practice, however, public statements in support of LGBTQI+ people and of equal rights for them in Ukraine, along with the public figures who voice such support, regularly meet with expressions of hatred, especially on social media. And open public events devoted to LGBTQI+ topics run into opposition and attempts to disrupt them from transphobic and homophobic movements – sometimes involving physical force, firearms, tear gas, pyrotechnics and the like. The state, for its part, does not do enough to make free expression possible by guaranteeing safety.

A telling example is the “Equality Festival” in Lviv held by Insight NGO in 2016 – a cultural and educational event devoted not even exclusively to LGBTQI+ topics but to various discriminated-against minorities. Threats against the organizers from far-right organizations had been voiced in advance, and the event itself, barely under way, was blocked by masked men who threw stones at the participants while the police were evacuating them. The police did nothing to stop the attackers, and the mayor of Lviv called the incident “a well-planned operation,” placing the blame on both sides. No one was held accountable for it either. Over the years the situation has not fundamentally changed – in late 2024, for instance, the KyivPride organization was forced to cancel its “Kyiv Queer Talk” lecture series because of an attack by members of far-right organizations, who threw firecrackers and smoke grenades while trying to break through the police cordon responsible for the event’s security.

Members of those same transphobic and homophobic movements, on the other hand, usually meet with no obstacles at all when they voice views rooted in cisheteronormativity that include open aspirations to restrict the rights of LGBTQI+ people. Churches and religious figures, in particular, regularly issue statements in “defense of the traditional family,” which in their understanding means preventing homosexual relationships; they freely hold events devoted to this and continue to enjoy considerable authority in society. So the opportunities to exercise the right to freely express one’s views and beliefs are in fact unequal when it comes to LGBTQI+ topics.

In this context it is also worth recalling a court ruling from 2020 connected with an appeal by the Chernivtsi Regional Council “on protecting the institution of the family in Ukraine,” in which it demanded, among other things, that any mention of SOGI be removed from Ukrainian legislation and that various kinds of “propaganda of homosexualism” be banned. Hearing a claim brought against this appeal by the “We Exist!” Human Rights Bureau, the court initially assessed it as incitement to discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, but the appellate court later overturned that finding. In other words, the promotion of homophobic rhetoric by a state institution was deemed lawful and acceptable.

The “Law on Media” adopted in 2023 prohibits, in Article 36, disseminating “statements that incite hatred, hostility or cruelty toward individuals or groups of individuals on the grounds of … sexual orientation, gender identity…” It can therefore be applied against hate speech about LGBTQI+ people in the Ukrainian information space, in particular on social media. So far, however, not enough time has passed since it entered into force to draw conclusions about how effective it is.

As for the opportunity to speak freely offline, the situation has been improving in recent years, mostly thanks to the efforts of LGBTQI+ civil society organizations that work with law enforcement agencies and run educational work among them. Without more active involvement from the state, however, their efforts will never be enough for this right to be realized in full.

Recommendation

Work with law enforcement agencies so that they do their job properly in ensuring that public events devoted to LGBTQI+ topics can be held safely and in holding those who breach public order accountable.

Article 35

“Everyone has the right to freedom of personal philosophy and religion.” “The Church and religious organizations in Ukraine are separated from the State, and the school – from the Church. No religion shall be recognized by the State as mandatory.”

Contrary to this provision, churches in Ukraine do in fact influence the state and its policies. The first thing to note here is the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations (AUCCRO), which includes representatives of Ukraine’s main churches. Although different churches hold different views and clash on many issues, on some of them they take a consolidated position under the auspices of the AUCCRO. This applies in particular to everything touching on “traditional family values,” which presuppose fixed gender roles for men and women and rule out any manifestation of being transgender or of any sexuality other than heterosexual. Acting directly, or by coordinating the actions of individual religious communities, the AUCCRO has repeatedly exerted political pressure on those in power in order to block legislative initiatives that would in one way or another bring equal rights on the grounds of SOGIESC closer, in particular:

For years the AUCCRO opposed Ukraine’s ratification of the Istanbul Convention, noting that it was of course against domestic violence, but that concepts such as “gender” and “gender identity” present in the text of the convention were problematic for it. In 2016, in particular, ratification was derailed because the parliamentary majority saw in the convention “norms that are unacceptable for Ukrainian society and Ukrainian spirituality.” This resistance was only overcome in 2022, and then only because ratification had been made an informal requirement for Ukraine to obtain EU candidate country status.
In 2017 the Ministry of Health was ready to lift the ban on adopting children that applied to a number of diagnoses, including those related to being transgender. But because of a mass mailing of letters by religious associations, which unanimously opposed lifting such a ban because it supposedly threatened the “traditional family,” the Ministry abandoned this initiative and later agreed only to a partial easing of the adoption restriction.
One of the items in the Action Plan for implementing the National Human Rights Strategy for 2015–2020 was drafting legislation on registered civil partnerships that would also be available to same-sex couples. Once again, though, because of a flood of appeals from religious organizations that came out against it, this item was ultimately marked as impossible to implement. Later, when MP Inna Sovsun introduced bill No. 9103 on registered partnerships in the Verkhovna Rada, the AUCCRO came out directly against it and also issued a statement “on the inadmissibility of equating same-sex cohabitation with a family.” Sovsun herself noted that the relevant Committee on Legal Policy, on which the possibility of putting the bill before the chamber depends, coordinates its position with the AUCCRO.

To sum up, despite what the Constitution says, the church in general and the AUCCRO as its governing body de facto constitute another branch of power in Ukraine, with entirely real influence and active interference in the shaping of state policy and lawmaking. And such interference regularly stands in the way of advancing equal rights for LGBTQI+ people.

Beyond that, the church occupies a significant place in Ukrainian public discourse, where one often hears that it is the Orthodox religion that is inherent to the Ukrainian people. The main Orthodox holidays, in particular, are official days off in Ukraine, which helps integrate the religious themes associated with them into contemporary culture. Orthodoxy thus informally ends up in a privileged position compared both with other religious teachings and with a non-religious worldview. At the same time, homosexual relationships are presented from the standpoint of the Orthodox Church as a “sin” that must be fought and rooted out – and although some priests do not share this view, they are in the minority against the backdrop of the church hierarchs and the AUCCRO’s general position.

In the end, when it comes to the right to freedom of personal philosophy, non-heterosexual people find themselves in an unequal position both when they practice the Orthodox faith and when they hold other views. In the first case they face condemnation within the religious environment simply for who they are, or are forced to hide it. In the second, their very sexual orientation may be seen as a consequence or a component of “sinful” worldview positions. Taken together, this can not only stand in the way of exercising the right in question but also lead to exclusion from certain social circles and to discrimination.

Recommendation

Develop an oversight mechanism within state bodies to prevent undue influence on them from churches and religious organizations.

Article 39

“Citizens have the right to assemble peacefully, without arms, and to hold meetings, rallies, processions and demonstrations, of which the bodies of executive power or bodies of local self-government are notified in advance.”

Just as with freedom of thought and speech, the state imposes no restrictions in Ukraine on peaceful assembly on the grounds of SOGIESC. Yet throughout the entire time since LGBTQI+ people began organizing and publicly declaring themselves a social group, holding such assemblies has run into obstruction and resistance.

Consider, for instance, the history of the LGBTQI+ Pride (which later came to be called the “Equality March”) in Kyiv:

The first attempt to hold the march was in 2012, but it was ultimately called off because of numerous threats from far-right organizations.
In 2013 a very limited number of people took part in the march, and its location, where it proceeded surrounded by a dense cordon of what was then still the militsiya, was kept secret because of threats.
In 2014 the march was canceled once again because of threats, with the militsiya refusing to ensure that the event could be held safely.
In 2015 the venue was likewise not announced openly but sent to participants after they registered. Despite this, far-right activists found out about it and attacked the main column first, injuring police officers above all, and then chased the participants as they fled through courtyards.
Starting in 2016, the “Equality March” was held openly on the city’s central streets. Unprecedented measures were taken to ensure its safety: closing off the area where it took place and police screening at the entrance; shutting down the nearest metro stations; special metro trains to take participants away once the march ended. The number of police involved in these operations was comparable to, and sometimes larger than, the number of people taking part in the march. Far-right activists, meanwhile, regularly gathered for counter-assemblies, threatened physical violence and in some cases carried out attacks. On top of that, after the march they staged a so-called “safari” on the city’s streets, going after essentially anyone who in their view looked like an LGBTQI+ person.
To this can be added a number of incidents at other peaceful assemblies in various Ukrainian cities that were directly related to LGBTQI+ topics or involved the active participation of openly LGBTQI+ people, when there were threats, condemnations of holding such events, attempts at disruption, attacks, refusals to cooperate on the part of local authorities or the police, and inadequate investigation of incidents that occurred during the event.

The main source of such opposition, as already noted, is organized far-right movements that profess the ideology of “traditional values,” of which cisheteronormativity is a component. They usually present it as inherent to patriotism and nationalism as such, thereby trying to legitimize their homophobia and transphobia. Tellingly, the marches and public actions that these movements hold themselves mostly proceed calmly and without hindrance, which is clear evidence of actual inequality on the grounds of SOGIESC when it comes to exercising the right to peaceful assembly.

Beyond far-right resistance itself, the other side of the problem is inadequate action by the authorities and law enforcement. Although there has been a trend toward improvement in recent years – and thanks to the efforts not so much of the state as of civil society organizations that work with the police – it is worth noting that in most cases far-right activists have not been held accountable for their threats and attacks. This breeds a sense of impunity and sends the signal that they can repeat such acts again and again, whereas a firm response would, on the contrary, push them to stop. If the police open cases on such incidents at all, they usually investigate them as “hooliganism.” As a result, the attackers often get away with a minimal punishment in the form of a small fine. That the attacks are committed precisely out of intolerance on the grounds of SOGIESC is not taken into account.

Imperfect legislation contributes to this as well: the provision that best fits such cases is Article 161 of the Criminal Code, “Violation of citizens’ equality based on their race, nationality, regional origin, religious beliefs, disability and other characteristics.” Although for such acts committed by organized groups it provides for 5 to 8 years of imprisonment, the absence of SOGIESC characteristics in explicit form from its text means that in practice it is not applied. The only case known at the time of writing in which Article 161 was in fact applied, with a note that the crime was motivated by “discrimination on certain grounds, which in this particular case were expressed by the single umbrella term “transgender identity”,” concerned an attack on a transgender woman in Lviv. There, however, no organized group was involved, and the attacker got off with an almost minimal punishment – a fine.

The situation could be fixed by bill No. 5488, which is meant to establish in law a definition of intolerance and, correspondingly, of a hate crime, along with appropriate punishment for it, including on the grounds of SOGI. It was proposed back in 2021 but, as of the time of writing, still has not been considered by the Verkhovna Rada, which does nothing to bring a solution to the problem of obstructing peaceful assemblies of LGBTQI+ people any closer.

Recommendations:

Introduce legislation to counter hate crimes committed on the grounds of SOGIESC;
Run educational activities on SOGIESC issues within law enforcement agencies so that they properly do their job of maintaining public order during peaceful assemblies and demonstrations related to these topics.

Article 43

“Everyone has the right to labor, including the possibility to earn a living by labor that he or she freely chooses or freely agrees to.” “Citizens are guaranteed protection against unlawful dismissal.”

This article provides that the ability to work in a job of one’s own choosing must not depend on SOGIESC characteristics either. In practice, however, there is ample testimony from LGBTQI+ people about being refused employment, being dismissed, or being pressured at work in one way or another, indirectly forcing them to leave because of their SOGIESC. Transgender people run into this especially often during transition, when their identity documents do not match their gender identity and expression.

In 2015, as already mentioned, an amendment to the Labor Code was adopted that prohibited discrimination in employment on a number of grounds, including SOGI. Tellingly, it was possible to pass it largely because it was one of the conditions for introducing visa-free travel between Ukraine and the EU. Even so, the vote on it was the hardest of all the “visa-free laws,” precisely because SOGI were included. In 2022 a state guarantee of the right to protection in this sphere against any manifestations of discrimination on the grounds of SOGI was also added to the Law “On Employment.”

Years later, however, we can say that LGBTQI+ people in Ukraine still keep running into such discrimination. The Nash Svit LGBTQI+ Human Rights Center, in particular, recorded 5 such cases in 2024 as well. To some extent this can be linked to the fact that such discrimination often takes indirect forms. For example, when a trans person is refused a job with the generic wording “you are not a good fit for us,” yet the interview taken as a whole makes it obvious that they stopped being a good fit precisely once their transgender identity became known. Or when a gay man, once his orientation becomes known, starts being threatened or held to inflated demands so that he eventually decides to resign of his own accord. In such cases, when SOGI are not named directly as the reason for the discriminatory treatment, proving that discrimination took place can be difficult. On top of that, LGBTQI+ people themselves often do not even try to seek justice, understanding that it will take enormous effort and doubting that it will succeed.

Clearly, under such conditions, the law by itself is not enough: additional measures are needed for it to work properly. On the one hand, this means educational work aimed at employers in order to overcome their stereotypes about LGBTQI+ people, and a state information policy that would openly support the idea that discrimination is unacceptable. On the other hand, it means mechanisms that would make it easier to prove cases of indirect discrimination, as well as greater awareness of them within law enforcement agencies. Until that exists, the right to work, including protection against unlawful dismissal, is not properly observed in Ukraine for LGBTQI+ people.

Recommendations:

Run educational work aimed at employers in order to raise their awareness of LGBTQI+ topics and to overcome homophobia, biphobia and transphobia;
Develop and introduce mechanisms for countering discrimination in employment more effectively, in particular its indirect forms.

Article 47

“Everyone has the right to housing. The State creates conditions under which every citizen will have the opportunity to build housing, to purchase it as property, or to lease it. Citizens in need of social protection are provided with housing by the State and bodies of local self-government, free of charge or at a price affordable for them, in accordance with the law.”

As with the right to work, reality here diverges from what is declared in the Constitution, since LGBTQI+ people face discrimination in the area of housing as well – in particular, refusal to rent to them and unlawful eviction. This happens precisely when their SOGIESC becomes known. Those at the greatest risk when renting housing are trans people in cases where their appearance does not match their passport data because of a legally incomplete transition, and same-sex couples, since in these cases their sexual orientation and/or gender identity may become obvious even without coming out. Also at risk are young LGBTQI+ people who live with parents who do not accept their SOGIESC – those parents may throw them out or resort to violence, creating conditions in which leaving the shared home becomes the better way out.

Ukrainian legislation contains no separate remedies against discrimination in the area of housing. At the same time, the general anti-discrimination law does extend to this area, but, as already noted, it does not explicitly include SOGIESC among the protected grounds. As a result, in practice it is not applied in such cases.

LGBTQI+ people who are forced to leave their homes because of the homophobia, biphobia, or transphobia of those around them – and now, during the war, also those who have left the occupied or frontline territories – often need temporary housing. However, the shelters provided by the State are for the most part not inclusive of LGBTQI+ people. Most of them are intended for women who have survived violence, and even with such a gender specialization trans women and lesbians may encounter hostile attitudes there. LGBTQI+ civil society organizations partly try to compensate for this situation, but on a nationwide scale their capacity is not enough. Thus, in this respect too, the ability to exercise the right to housing is unequal on the grounds of SOGIESC.

Recommendations:

Introduce a legislative ban on discrimination in the area of housing on the grounds of SOGIESC;
Work to make State social housing inclusive of LGBTQI+ people.

Article 49

“Everyone has the right to health care, medical assistance and medical insurance.”

The medical needs of LGBTQI+ people can be roughly divided into two categories: those whose specific nature is connected precisely with SOGIESC, and all the rest. We stress that meeting specific needs cannot be regarded as “special rights” – just as, for example, they are not regarded as such in the case of people with disabilities. In both cases these are components of the right to health care, the realization of which may require different means for different people and social groups.

Medical needs of the second category are characterized by the fact that they do not require coming out, and this accordingly reduces the risk of encountering discrimination. Although when SOGIESC does become known, discrimination can still occur. Thus, in individual cases doctors refused to provide care to LGBTQI+ people on the grounds that the specifics of their SOGIESC fell outside their competence, even though the medical services requested of them had nothing to do with those specifics. In other cases doctors refused simply because of SOGIESC, without giving any reasons.

Specific needs include:

gynecological and sexological services for women who have sex with women;
andrological and sexological services for men who have sex with men;
medical services connected with gender transition: psychiatric, psychotherapeutic, endocrinological, surgical;
medical services for trans people and intersex people related to the health of their sexual organs (since those may be different from the organs of cis people with the same gender identity);
reproductive services for any LGBTQI+ people (since these involve the use of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) with account taken of the specifics of SOGIESC).

The factors that impede the realization of the right to health care when seeking such services are the following:

Discriminatory attitudes on the part of doctors

These manifest themselves in the same way as in the case of any other medical services.

Lack of competence

The source of the problem is that LGBTQI+-related issues are practically absent from the curricula of medical universities. So doctors who do master these topics largely do so on their own enthusiasm and at their own expense, and also with the support of civil society organizations that run training events and/or bring in specialists from abroad for professional development. On the scale of the whole country, however, this is not enough, so LGBTQI+ people often have to spend extra time searching for friendly, competent doctors – including turning to doctors in another region.

Restrictions on certain medical services:

For transgender people, the transition procedure under the current clinical protocol requires that any medical intervention be preceded by the establishment of the psychiatric diagnosis of “Transsexualism.” If it is not established, or if some other diagnosis is established instead (which in individual cases also happens because of doctors’ incompetence or prejudice), then other medical interventions for carrying out the transition, such as hormone therapy and especially surgery, will not be available.
The diagnosis of “Transsexualism” in itself limits access to ART, namely to “infertility treatment at the expense of the budget” under the order of the Ministry of Health. In addition, under the program of medical guarantees, free infertility treatment services are provided according to sex, where female or male civil sex is directly linked to female or male sexual organs. This makes such services unavailable to trans people who have retained their congenital sexual organs after transition, and also to some intersex people.
Same-sex couples, because their family relationship is in no way recognized by the State, cannot receive ART services as a family. Thus, if a couple of two women or two men applies for such services at a clinic, only one of them will be able to sign the contract with the clinic, as a single person. And all the formal procedures in the process of providing the services will proceed from that, in accordance with the “Procedure for the Application of Assisted Reproductive Technologies in Ukraine” issued by the Ministry of Health.

Taken together, it can be said that eliminating inequality with regard to the right to health requires comprehensive solutions. In part they concern the legislative level – in particular, the introduction of ICD-11, which should entail updating a number of medical standards and clinical protocols related to being transgender. But awareness-raising measures are arguably even more important – above all, the inclusion of LGBTQI+ topics, in the relevant medical aspects, in specialized curricula.

Recommendations:

Include information about diverse SOGIESC and their specific features in the curricula of medical educational institutions;
Include free medical services related to the specific needs of trans people and intersex people in the program of medical guarantees;
Review and abolish discriminatory restrictions on LGBTQI+ people’s access to reproductive medical services.

Article 51

“Marriage is based on the free consent of a woman and a man. Each of the spouses has equal rights and duties in the marriage and family.” “The family, childhood, motherhood and fatherhood are under the protection of the State.”

In this article it is worth first paying attention to the fact that its text differs from other similar articles that deal with rights. Whereas those begin by formulating the right to which they are devoted, here the concept of marriage is introduced first – and not by way of a definition, but rather by way of an outline that contains an implicit restriction. That is, it does not say directly that only a woman and a man may enter into marriage with each other but only that marriage “is based on the free consent” of such persons. Thus, the constitutional wording already bars same-sex couples from having the rights of spouses – but somewhat in a veiled way, leaving room to interpret it differently depending on the context. The Family Code, however, states directly: “Marriage is a family union of a woman and a man, registered with a state body for the registration of civil status acts.”

At the same time, a family is not necessarily a married couple, but any “persons who live together, are bound by a common household, and have mutual rights and duties” (the definition from Article 3 of the Family Code, “The Family”). Moreover, a family, under that same article, “is created on the basis of marriage, blood relationship, adoption, and also on other grounds not prohibited by law and not contrary to the moral principles of society”; in addition, a single person has the rights of a family member. These definitions of the family are, on the one hand, broad enough to be extended to LGBTQI+ families as well, including those with children. On the other hand, “the moral principles of society” is a highly vague category, which supporters of so-called “traditional family values” may interpret as excluding LGBTQI+ people. So, in the absence of additional clarifications (for example, in other regulatory acts), in one life situation or another such ambiguity in practice has to be removed by a court decision.

Be that as it may, legal mechanisms under which the family unions of LGBTQI+ people, even without being called marriages, would receive the same protection from the State are at least theoretically possible. Let us look at how far such possibilities have been realized in Ukraine.

First of all, we have to note that Ukrainian legislation today does not provide for the registration of family relationships in any form other than marriage. The need to introduce the institution of civil partnerships in Ukraine – for both same-sex and different-sex couples – was raised at the state level back in 2015, when the task of drafting the relevant legislation was included in the Action Plan for the Implementation of the National Human Rights Strategy for the period 2015–2020. In fact, however, such a bill appeared in Ukraine only in 2023, submitted by Inna Sovsun, a member of parliament from the “Holos” party. Since then it has been supported by several committees of the Verkhovna Rada, but the prospects for its adoption are still uncertain.

Apart from registering a relationship, there are ways to regulate individual aspects of it, such as property, inheritance, and so on. For the most part this is possible by concluding notarial agreements and powers of attorney. The very need to resort to separate measures for different eventualities, and to pay separately for each of them, where for a different-sex couple it is enough simply to enter into marriage, already points to inequality. But even by resorting to them, a same-sex family does not obtain any guarantee of the desired result. In particular, in the following matters:

Making decisions about treatment In a situation where a person from a same-sex family ends up in hospital and, because of their state of health, cannot make decisions about their treatment and other medical interventions on their own, their partner likewise has no right to make such decisions, because for the State they are not a family and in general are legally nobody to each other. In theory this issue can be resolved through powers of attorney, but that requires additional time, expense, and constant renewal of such documents. And they also do not give a 100% guarantee, whereas for heterosexual couples everything is resolved automatically by entering into marriage and requires no additional effort.
Disposing of the body and arranging the funeral Same-sex families cannot exercise this right in respect of a deceased partner, because in the legal domain they are nobody to each other. A power of attorney does not solve this problem, since such a document ceases to be valid at the moment of the principal’s death. It is possible to draw up a will specifying who will handle the funeral arrangements and the form of the ritual (burial or cremation), in accordance with Article 1240 of the Civil Code of Ukraine. However, if, for example, the deceased person’s parents had a negative attitude toward their child’s family and bad relations with them, there is a considerable risk that they will contest the will, go to court, and create additional stressful situations. Heterosexual couples are automatically spared such problems in the legal domain by entering into marriage.
Representing a child’s interests In LGBTQI+ families with children the same questions of upbringing and care arise as in heterosexual families, but the realization of this right cannot be complete. For a partner who is not a biological relative is legally nobody to the child and cannot, for example, make decisions about the child’s treatment or represent and defend the child’s interests at kindergarten, school, university, and so on. For this, the biological parent has to draw up a power of attorney for such actions. There may be two or even five such powers of attorney, which takes the family time and additional money, and also means having to carry these documents around at all times. Once again, in heterosexual couples this question does not even come up, because it is automatically resolved by entering into marriage.

Also, in a number of situations where the rights of relatives come into conflict with one another, marriage gives the husband or the wife a preferential right. In the case of notarial agreements or other legal documents, since they do not establish kinship between those who conclude them, the preferential right remains with close relatives rather than with the partner. This concerns the following situations:

Inheritance of property If movable and/or immovable property belongs to one person from an LGBTQI+ family, then after their death the other cannot inherit it under the law, that is, where there is no will. The grounds for inheritance under the law are: kinship; the procedure for re-registering property located in territory outside government control; family relations; marriage; adoption; having been a dependent of the testator for at least 5 years before their death. Spouses belong to the first order of heirs (Article 1261 of the Civil Code of Ukraine), but this does not extend to same-sex families. One option may be for the partner to go to court in order to prove having been a dependent of the testator for at least 5 years before the death. But if they were not a dependent, or if they lived together as a family for less than 5 years, this will not work. Another option may be a will. Unfortunately, court practice shows that it can be contested, and this is what an LGBTQI+ family is likely to face if relations with the testator’s relatives are bad. So, once again, the absence of marriage does not provide the protection of the rights and duties that heterosexual couples acquire once they enter into it.
Inheritance of a deposit For example, an LGBTQI+ family saves money together in order to buy a shared house, take a vacation, do renovations, and so on. The deposit is opened in the name of one person from the couple, with the right of the other to add to it. If the holder of the deposit does not manage to leave instructions regarding it in the event of their death, then this inheritance is considered as part of the general body of the estate and is inherited under the law (Article 1228 of the Civil Code of Ukraine). That is, the partner has no right at all to this deposit.
Care for children After the death of the biological parent in an LGBTQI+ family, the other parent, despite active participation in raising and supporting the partner’s child, has no automatic right to go on caring for them. Many complications can arise because of the child’s age (whether they can already be heard in adoption proceedings) and the presence of other relatives of the biological parent who may wish to obtain custody of a grandchild, a niece or nephew, depending on the form of kinship. The parent can draw up a will stating their wish to appoint the partner as sole guardian. This will be a supporting but, unfortunately, not a decisive condition. In such cases neither the partner nor the child is protected by law, whereas if a marriage had been entered into this would not even be up for discussion.

There are also rights and duties less often mentioned in this context, such as the rights and duties under a rent-to-own housing agreement, a contract for the sale and purchase of an indivisible object of unfinished construction/a future real estate object (first sale), or a contract on participation in a construction financing fund. These are also inherited and, accordingly, in a same-sex family the same inheritance problems arise with them.

From the examples given it is obvious that outside marriage same-sex families in Ukraine are in fact deprived of a number of rights, while the mechanisms for realizing these rights involve additional difficulties and, on top of that, do not guarantee that they will be observed. We note that even if the above-mentioned bill No. 9103 on registered partnerships, or another analogous one, is adopted, full equality of rights is not on the table, since it does not provide for the possibility of partners adopting children. As for introducing in Ukraine the possibility of marriage between persons of the same civil sex, that question has not yet even been put on the agenda by any of the political parties and figures represented in parliament.

Recommendation

Introduce legislation under which same-sex couples could register their relationship as a family one, with the same rights and duties as spouses in a marriage.

Article 53

“Everyone has the right to education.”

Formally, Ukrainian legislation contains no restrictions on obtaining an education on the grounds of SOGIESC. But the realization of this right also depends on the environment in educational institutions – on whether it genuinely provides equal conditions for pupils and students regardless of their SOGIESC.

In practice, LGBTQI+ pupils and students are often bullied. Thus, the “Second National Study of the School Environment for LGBTQI+ Teenagers” of 2019/2020 found that 59% of LGBTQI+ children hear verbal abuse directed at them at school, 30% face physical violence, and 49% face sexual violence. 87% of LGBTQI+ children feel excluded from school life. At the same time, 69% of the pupils who were subjected to homophobic abuse also heard such remarks from teachers and the school administration. And 55% of LGBTQI+ children reported that there is no adult at their school whom they could turn to for help.

If, out of fear of encountering homophobia, biphobia, or transphobia, LGBTQI+ pupils choose not to come out and to conceal the specifics of their SOGIESC, they have to make a particular effort to do so, and their engagement in the learning process suffers as a result. This applies especially to transgender pupils and students, for whom such concealment begins already with the name and the gendered forms used to address them, which causes them additional emotional suffering.

The results of the first national study of the school environment noted that pupils who were subjected to a high level of verbal bullying because of their sexual orientation and/or gender expression missed school more often, have lower academic performance, and show lower levels of self-esteem. They are also significantly more likely to want to end their education at the level of basic secondary schooling, compared with those who do not encounter such bullying.

Since 2019, the law “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine on Countering Bullying” has been in force in Ukraine. It does not, however, mention LGBTQI+ pupils as one of the groups vulnerable to bullying, which makes it less effective in countering bullying on the grounds of SOGIESC – especially given that the source of such bullying is often the school staff themselves.

Also, as already noted, state educational programs in Ukraine contain no information about the diversity of SOGIESC. This not only shapes a cisheteronormative atmosphere in educational institutions, which in every way contributes to the bullying mentioned above, but also stands in the way of self-discovery by LGBTQI+ pupils as a component of their right to education.

Recommendations

Introduce a legislative ban on discrimination in the area of education on the grounds of SOGIESC;
Include information about diverse SOGIESC in state curricula.

Article 63

“A person bears no responsibility for refusing to give testimony or explanations concerning themselves, members of their family, or close relatives, the range of whom is determined by law.”

This right is enshrined in Ukrainian legislation in Article 385 of the Criminal Code, which likewise speaks of the absence of criminal liability for refusing to give testimony concerning oneself, members of one’s family, or close relatives. Their range, in turn, is defined by the Criminal Procedure Code as “a husband, wife, father, mother, stepfather, stepmother, son, daughter, stepson, stepdaughter, full brother, full sister, grandfather, grandmother, great-grandfather, great-grandmother, grandson, granddaughter, great-grandson, great-granddaughter, adopter or adoptee, guardian or custodian, a person under guardianship or custody, and also persons who live together, are bound by a common household and have mutual rights and duties, including persons who live together but are not married.” As can be seen, LGBTQI+ couples fall here only under the last category, but the fact that they live together still has to be proved – as a rule, through the courts.

Thus, compared with heterosexual spouses, partners in LGBTQI+ unions, in the absence of state registration of those unions as families, are in fact deprived of any possibility of refusing to give testimony about each other.

Recommendation

Introduce legislation under which same-sex couples could register their relationship and be recognized as members of a family.

Article 68

“Everyone is obliged to strictly abide by the Constitution of Ukraine and the laws of Ukraine, and not to encroach upon the rights and freedoms, honor and dignity of other people.”

This article generalizes the inadmissibility of violating all the rights discussed above for any people – hence, including LGBTQI+ people. We will not go into the details of the violations that take place again here. We can only repeat that in a number of typical cases they are committed on SOGIESC grounds, namely against people of a non-heterosexual orientation; people whose gender identity does not match the sex assigned to them at birth (transgender people); people with sex characteristics that differ from male and female ones (intersex people); and also sometimes against people who are taken to be such.

It can therefore be argued that violations of this constitutional duty are taking place on the grounds of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia, which leads to the absence of equal rights for LGBTQI+ people.

Recommendation

See the recommendations for all the previous articles.

Every personality has a range of diverse traits and manifestations, and SOGIESC (sexual orientation, gender identity/expression and/or sex characteristics) is among them. The free development of personality means that a person can freely discover them in themselves, study them, explore them, disclose them to other people, express them in interaction with others, and safely build their life taking them into account. In a certain sense, this right lays the foundation that opens up paths for realizing a number of other human rights. How possible is this in Ukraine?

On the one hand, Ukrainian legislation contains no ban on any manifestations related to SOGIESC. The law that criminalized homosexual relations was repealed in the very first year of Ukraine’s independence. Later attempts to introduce various restrictions on homosexuality or transgender identity, such as a ban on their “propaganda,” were unsuccessful in the Verkhovna Rada.

On the other hand, there is still no actual equality of rights regardless of SOGIESC, because:

State educational curricula contain practically no information on SOGIESC topics. At the same time, everything connected with heterosexuality and cisgender identity is presented as the basic default option, often creating the impression that it is the only one possible. This limits the opportunities to learn about different SOGIESC and to study their manifestations, starting with becoming aware of one’s own SOGIESC, for people in general, and it complicates the process of self-discovery most of all for LGBTQI+ people. Moreover, the lack of such information contributes to the spread of homophobic, biphobic and transphobic myths and stereotypes in society and reinforces the marginalization of LGBTQI+ people.
The fact that it is precisely heterosexuality and cisgender identity that society perceives as the “default SOGIESC” also means that for LGBTQI+ people disclosing theirs becomes a separate step (and more often a series of such steps) along their life path, which in itself already makes their position unequal. What is more, because of the high level of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in society, such disclosure often carries the risk of rejection, discrimination and even various forms of violence. Consequently, unlike cisheterosexual people, LGBTQI+ people constantly have to weigh whether they can come out in particular circumstances or whether it is safer to refrain from doing so. Accordingly, this limits the expression of their personality, from simple communication all the way to career prospects.
For transgender people, the development of personality is also linked to the possibility of undergoing gender transition. It may include both bodily changes to bring sex characteristics into the form that best matches their gender identity and recognition of that identity in the social and legal spheres. In general, all of this makes it possible to live and fulfill oneself in society in accordance with one’s self-awareness, one’s “I.” Cisgender people, in the aspect of their gender identity, have this possibility, once again, by default. In Ukraine there is a transition procedure for trans people regulated by a number of legal acts, but it remains rather complicated. In particular, changing the sex marker in the documents that certify a person’s identity and confirm Ukrainian citizenship has medical procedures as a mandatory precondition. These procedures, in turn, include, at a minimum, a psychiatric examination with a diagnosis of “Transsexualism” and hormone replacement therapy. Such difficulties result in some trans people not daring to undergo transition or postponing it for a long time. In addition, Ukrainian legislation allows changing the sex marker from “male” to “female” or vice versa, but provides for no recognition whatsoever of the gender identity of non-binary people. Their opportunities for the development of personality in Ukraine are therefore even more limited.
For intersex people, the free development of personality has to take into account their bodily features, which differ from typical female or male bodies. Besides the fact that along their life path they, like other LGBTQI+ people, face problems generated by society’s lack of information about intersex variations, many of them also go through so-called “normalization” – bringing their bodies into line with the female or male “norm,” usually through surgery in early childhood. Such procedures not only have long-lasting traumatic consequences in themselves, but also result in an artificially shaped sex that may not correspond to the gender identity a person becomes aware of at a later age. At the same time, unlike trans people, for whom Ukraine has a procedure for medical transition and legal gender recognition, however imperfect, for intersex people there is currently no analogous procedure at all. They are left either to adapt to the transition procedure, which is not tailored to their particular needs, or to live with such a mismatch between identity and body. Of course, there can be no talk of a truly free development of personality under such conditions.

Recommendations:

Include information about diverse SOGIESC in state educational curricula and run public information campaigns aimed at reducing the level of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia;
Revise the legal framework governing the gender transition procedure so that its individual components are not mandatory and rigid preconditions for one another;
Develop a transition procedure for intersex people based on a similar approach.

If we say in general that in the context of human rights there is no question of any “special rights” – in particular, for LGBTQI+ people, who often hear this said about them – then there should be no restrictions of rights based on any particular characteristics either. This article precisely provides for the absence of restrictions on any grounds, that is, of discrimination. Yet, as can be seen, SOGIESC is absent from the list of characteristics it sets out. At the same time, that list is not exhaustive, as it contains the general “other characteristics,” which may include them as well.

According to ILGA World data, only 12 countries currently have a constitutional-level ban on discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation, 5 – on the ground of gender identity, and none – on the ground of sex characteristics. This level, while being the strongest possible in terms of guaranteeing equal rights, is thus still not very widespread in the world. At the same time, an open-ended list of protected characteristics leaves room for introducing anti-discrimination provisions covering SOGIESC at other levels of legislation. So let us look at how things stand with this in Ukraine.

The Law “On the Principles of Preventing and Combating Discrimination in Ukraine” contains, in the very definition of discrimination, a list of the characteristics it may concern. That list, although broader than the constitutional one, likewise does not include SOGIESC and is open-ended, ending with “other characteristics.” Practice, however, shows that everything not explicitly specified is usually ignored when the relevant law is applied, and it is far harder to hold anyone accountable for discrimination on a characteristic that is only implicitly covered by the “other” ones.

It is important to note that a ban on discrimination on SOGIESC grounds would equally apply to heterosexual and cisgender people – so, once again, this is not about “special rights” for LGBTQI+ people. At the same time, by many accounts it is precisely LGBTQI+ people who face discrimination in Ukraine in the spheres of labor, education, health care, goods and services, housing and so on. In particular, the Nash Svit LGBTQI+ Human Rights Center records such data. In most cases, moreover, those who committed such discrimination bore no responsibility for it.

In recent years, anti-discrimination provisions have gradually appeared in Ukrainian legislation in narrower spheres, where the characteristics of sexual orientation and/or gender identity are present, in particular:

Article 21 of the Labor Code, “Equality of labor rights of citizens of Ukraine, prevention of discrimination in the sphere of labor,” has contained a ban on such discrimination on SOGI grounds since 2015.
Section II of the Rules of Ethical Conduct for Police Officers, “Basic requirements for the conduct of a police officer,” of 2016 provides that in the performance of official duties a police officer must, in particular, “show respect for the dignity of every person and treat everyone fairly and impartially, regardless of,” among other things, sexual orientation.
The general provisions of the Procedure for the Provision of Primary Health Care (PHC), approved in 2018, set out the principle of “non-discrimination, which consists in the provision of PHC services whose quality does not differ depending on sex, sexual orientation,” and so on.
Article 11 of the Law on Employment of the Population, “The right of a person to protection from manifestations of discrimination in the sphere of employment,” has since 2022 provided for a state-guaranteed right to protection from any manifestations of discrimination in the sphere of employment, including on SOGI grounds.
Article 100 of the Law on the All-Ukrainian Referendum, “Restrictions on campaigning for an all-Ukrainian referendum,” in its 2022 version prohibits, during such campaigning, “disseminating in any way materials that contain signs of, or incite, discrimination against or harassment of individuals and groups of persons” on SOGI grounds, among others.
Article 8 of the Law on Advertising, “General requirements for advertising,” has since 2023 prohibited “presenting statements and/or images that are discriminatory and/or incite hatred, hostility or cruelty toward individuals or groups of persons” on the ground of sexual orientation.
Article 36 of the Law on Media, “Restrictions on the content of information,” has since 2023 prohibited “statements that incite discrimination against or harassment of individuals or groups of persons” on SOGI grounds.
The Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine of 2024 “On approving the Procedure for the material, medical, psychological and social provision for service members taking into account the needs of women and men” prohibits discrimination against service members on SOGI grounds during admission to military service and while serving.

It is worth noting that what matters is not only the existence of laws in themselves, but also compliance with them. There are problems with this too – again, because of the generally high level of homophobia, transphobia and biphobia in society and because of low awareness of SOGIESC both among officials who are supposed to refrain from discrimination and among law enforcement officers who are supposed to hold violators accountable.

Individual spheres will be examined in more detail below. In general, it can be stated that because of the lack of sufficient protection both from legislation and from the law enforcement system, LGBTQI+ people in Ukraine face certain discriminatory restrictions.

Recommendation

Add sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics to the list of characteristics on which discrimination is prohibited by law in Ukraine.

Under this article, dignity must be respected equally for all people – hence, including regardless of their SOGIESC. In a cisheteronormative society, however, only heterosexual orientation and cisgender identity are regarded as the norm, and everything else as a deviation from it. This results in a variety of behaviors toward LGBTQI+ people that essentially amount to punishing them for failing to conform to social attitudes and expectations. They can be collectively described as “cisheteronormative violence”, which generally manifests itself at various levels of society – from an LGBTQI+ person’s immediate circle to the state as such.

In Ukraine the state is not directly hostile to LGBTQI+ people at the legislative level, but society as a whole remains largely cisheteronormative. So at all other levels they may encounter disrespect and humiliation because of their SOGIESC: in the family, in educational institutions, at work, in public space, in various institutions, and on the internet. Below we set out the manifestations of cisheteronormative violence connected with the degradation of human dignity that are widespread in Ukraine.

Harassment (bullying, mobbing)

Both LGBTQI+ children and teenagers in educational institutions and older LGBTQI+ people in workplace and other collectives suffer from it. A 2019/2020 study found, in particular, that almost 70% of LGBTQI+ students heard homophobic and transphobic comments addressed to them, with two thirds of these coming from teachers or school staff. Also, almost 30% experienced physical violence because of their sexual orientation and slightly fewer because of their gender expression. Overall, about 80% of students do not feel safe at school. A 2019 study conducted among Ukrainian LGBTQI+ service members found that particularly harsh homophobia in the form of physical violence, threats and cyberbullying is experienced above all by openly LGBTQI+ service members. LGBTQI+ people may also be subjected to harassment in workplace collectives.

Organized violence

This refers to violence that organized groups commit on a systematic basis against people on particular grounds – in our case, on SOGIESC grounds. In Ukraine these are mostly far-right movements, some of which are the radical wings of right-wing political parties, and they are often also affiliated with religious organizations. In their activities against LGBTQI+ people they endanger a number of their rights, which will be discussed in more detail in the sections devoted to the relevant articles. But at the core lies precisely the refusal to respect their human dignity. This manifests itself in degrading statements about LGBTQI+ people – especially on the internet, where they often go unpunished. In physical space such groups also accost LGBTQI+ people or those taken to be such, try to humiliate and intimidate them, and in some cases commit physical violence.

The vulnerability of LGBTQI+ people is also sometimes exploited by criminals who blackmail, extort from, attack and rob them. Offenders proceed, consciously or intuitively, from the assumption that the victims will fear disclosure of their SOGIESC and may avoid going to the police altogether. Or that, if they do report, the police, having learned about their SOGIESC, will be less inclined to investigate the case properly, and all the more so will not treat this as an aggravating circumstance, as they should – which, unfortunately, is often exactly what happens. All of this is a consequence of the cisheteronormativity of society and, in particular, of the fact that LGBTQI+ people within it are not seen as deserving the same respect as everyone else.

Conversion therapy

This is an umbrella term for pseudoscientific practices aimed at changing a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression in order to bring it into line with the norms of heterosexuality and/or cisgender identity. The ineffectiveness and harmfulness of such “treatment” has been proven by many studies and recognized by many scientific and professional associations at the international and national levels. Moreover, a number of international organizations, including the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, directly equate conversion therapy with torture and describe its practices as degrading to dignity.

In Ukraine today, the use of conversion therapy is not supported by any state documents, but neither is it directly prohibited or restricted. Only certain specialized standards, such as the clinical protocol “Gender Dysphoria”, which regulates the gender transition procedure, mention its ineffectiveness and the fact that being transgender and being homosexual are normal phenomena. Meanwhile, conversion therapy practices exist and are used openly – by religious figures, by some mental health professionals, including an entire association, and by practitioners of “traditional medicine.” According to a 2020 Freedom House survey, two thirds of those who suffer from it are LGBTQI+ teenagers. In 75% of cases conversion therapy is promoted by members of the LGBTQI+ person’s own family – in particular, parents arrange with doctors to place their children in psychiatric care units for their supposed further treatment.

Coercive requirements for gender transition

As already mentioned, in Ukraine a trans person who needs certain medical interventions and/or legal gender recognition (as part, let us recall, of exercising their right to the free development of personality) must obtain a psychiatric diagnosis of “Transsexualism” in order to do so. The procedure for obtaining it, in turn, requires outpatient observation by a psychiatrist for 2 years or examination in a psychiatric inpatient facility for 2 weeks. There is currently a consensus in the global medical community that being transgender as such is not a mental disorder, which is reflected in the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), approved in 2019.

The very need to obtain a diagnosis that is unnecessary from a medical point of view at a psychiatric institution is therefore humiliating. In essence, it comes down to a trans person having to prove to a psychiatrist the genuineness, the non-fictitiousness of their feeling, their self-definition, their “I.” Sometimes this procedure is also accompanied by extortion, blackmail and additional humiliation on the part of doctors who abuse their position, which gives them power over trans patients. The situation is expected to change with the introduction of ICD-11 in Ukraine, which will make it possible to remove the mandatory psychiatric examination from the medical transition procedure. This introduction is on the agenda of the Ministry of Health, but no specific timeline for it has been set so far. For now, trans people who need transition remain in an unequal position in terms of the right to respect for their dignity.

Normalization surgeries on intersex people

They are usually performed on infants in order to bring their genitals into an unambiguously “female” or “male” form when they do not have one from birth. This rules out the possibility of the person themselves giving informed consent to such surgery – that is, an intersex person is not regarded as a subject who could potentially have their own opinion on the matter, including one that differs from the doctors’. Moreover, information about such surgeries performed on them is often subsequently concealed from the children, which in no way helps intersex people feel dignified. Or their genitals are photographed and displayed at medical examinations, which is a degrading practice. Studies show that many intersex people have been shamed within the medical system and subjected to forced treatment, and have also often faced harassment and, as a result, have mental health problems. All of this applies to Ukraine as well, where such surgeries, although not directly recommended, are not prohibited either, and in fact are performed and even presented as achievements of a sort.

Summing up this section, it can be said that LGBTQI+ people encounter disrespect for their dignity in many aspects of life. Someone might object that cisheterosexual people can equally be subjected to humiliation, harassment and violence. In their case, however, such incidents are connected not with their cisgender identity and heterosexuality, but with other things, which may equally apply to LGBTQI+ people as well. It is therefore precisely the difference in society’s attitude toward SOGIESC that creates inequality in the realization of the right to respect for dignity for LGBTQI+ people.

Recommendations:

Introduce and/or strengthen measures against harassment (bullying, mobbing) in schools, in workplace collectives and on the internet, with explicit recognition of LGBTQI+ people as a group vulnerable to it;
Introduce ICD-11 in Ukraine and revise the gender transition procedure so as to remove the mandatory psychiatric examination from it;
Develop mechanisms for banning so-called conversion therapy and normalization surgeries on intersex children in Ukraine.

As regards LGBTQI+ topics, the Ukrainian state does not impose restrictions on expressing views and beliefs connected with them. At the same time, bills banning the so-called propaganda of “homosexualism” and/or “transgenderism” have repeatedly been submitted to the Verkhovna Rada, some of them copied from the analogous 2013 law of the russian federation (at the time of writing, two such bills remain pending), but none of them has been adopted.

In practice, however, public statements in support of LGBTQI+ people and of equal rights for them in Ukraine, as well as the public figures who voice such support, regularly encounter expressions of hatred directed at them, especially on social media. And open public events devoted to LGBTQI+ topics face opposition and attempts to disrupt them by transphobic and homophobic movements – sometimes with the use of physical force, firearms, tear gas, pyrotechnics and so on. The state, for its part, does not do enough to make free expression possible by guaranteeing safety.

A telling example is the “Equality Festival” in Lviv held by Insight NGO in 2016 – a cultural and educational event devoted not even exclusively to LGBTQI+ issues, but to various discriminated minorities. Threats against the organizers from far-right organizations had been voiced in advance, and the event itself, having barely begun, was blocked by masked men who threw stones at the participants while the police were evacuating them. The police did nothing to counter the attackers, and the mayor of Lviv called the incident a “well-planned operation,” blaming both sides for it. Nor did anyone bear responsibility for it. Over the years the situation has not changed fundamentally – thus, at the end of 2024 the organization KyivPride was forced to cancel its “Kyiv Queer Talk” lecture series because of an attack by members of far-right organizations, who threw firecrackers and smoke grenades in an attempt to break through the police cordon responsible for the safety of the event.

On the other hand, representatives of these same transphobic and homophobic movements, when voicing their views, which are based on cisheteronormativity and include explicit aspirations to restrict the rights of LGBTQI+ people, usually face no obstacles whatsoever. In particular, churches and religious figures regularly make statements in “defense of the traditional family,” which in their understanding means preventing homosexual relationships, freely hold events devoted to this, and continue to enjoy great authority in society. Opportunities to exercise the right to free expression of views and beliefs are therefore in fact unequal when it comes to LGBTQI+ topics.

In this context one can also recall a 2020 court ruling connected with an appeal by the Chernivtsi Regional Council “on protecting the institution of the family in Ukraine,” in which it demanded, in particular, that any mention of SOGI be removed from Ukrainian legislation and that various kinds of “propaganda of homosexualism” be banned. In reviewing a lawsuit brought by the “We Exist!” Human Rights Bureau against this appeal, the court initially assessed it as incitement to discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation, but the appellate court later overturned that conclusion. In other words, the promotion of homophobic rhetoric by a state institution was found to be lawful and acceptable.

The “Law on Media”, adopted in 2023, prohibits in Article 36 the dissemination of “statements that incite hatred, hostility or cruelty toward individuals or groups of persons on the ground of … sexual orientation, gender identity…” It can thus be applied against hate speech about LGBTQI+ people in the Ukrainian information space, in particular on social media. So far, however, not enough time has passed since it entered into force to draw conclusions about its effectiveness.

As for the possibility of free expression outside the internet, the situation has been improving in recent years, mostly through the efforts of LGBTQI+ civil society organizations that work with law enforcement agencies and carry out awareness-raising work among them. But without more active involvement of the state, their efforts will never be sufficient for this right to be realized in full.

Recommendation

Work with law enforcement agencies so that they properly perform their job of ensuring that public events devoted to LGBTQI+ topics can be held safely and that those who breach public order are held accountable.

Contrary to this provision, churches in Ukraine in fact influence the state and its policies. First and foremost, the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations (AUCCRO) should be noted here; it includes representatives of Ukraine’s main churches. Although different churches hold different views and are in conflict over many issues, on some of them they take a consolidated position under the aegis of the AUCCRO. In particular, on everything touching on “traditional family values,” which presuppose fixed gender roles for men and women and exclude any manifestations of transgender identity and of sexuality other than heterosexual. The AUCCRO, directly or by coordinating the actions of individual religious communities, has more than once exerted political pressure on government officials in order to block legislative initiatives aimed in one way or another at advancing equal rights on SOGIESC grounds, in particular:

For years the AUCCRO opposed Ukraine’s ratification of the Istanbul Convention, noting that it is, of course, against domestic violence, but that such concepts as “gender” and “gender identity,” present in the text of the convention, are problematic for it. In 2016, in particular, ratification was derailed because the parliamentary majority saw in the convention “norms that are unacceptable for Ukrainian society and Ukrainian spirituality.” This resistance was overcome only in 2022, and then only because ratification had been made an informal requirement for Ukraine to obtain the status of a candidate country for EU membership.
In 2017 the Ministry of Health was ready to lift the ban on adopting children imposed for a number of diagnoses, including those related to being transgender. However, because of a mass mailing of letters by religious associations, which unanimously opposed lifting this ban because it supposedly threatens the “traditional family,” the Ministry abandoned this initiative and later agreed only to a partial easing of the adoption restriction.
One of the items in the Action Plan for implementing the National Human Rights Strategy for 2015–2020 was to draft legislation on registered civil partnerships, which same-sex couples would also be able to enter into. However, once again because of a flood of appeals from religious organizations that came out against it, this item was ultimately marked as impossible to fulfill. Later, when MP Inna Sovsun submitted bill No. 9103 on registered partnerships to the Verkhovna Rada, the AUCCRO came out directly against it and also issued a statement “on the inadmissibility of equating same-sex cohabitation with the family.” Sovsun herself noted that the relevant Committee on Legal Policy, on which the possibility of bringing the bill to the floor depends, coordinates its position with the AUCCRO.

In summary, it can be said that despite what the Constitution says, the church in general and the AUCCRO as its governing body de facto constitute another branch of power in Ukraine, with entirely real influence and active interference in the shaping of state policy and lawmaking. And such interference regularly stands in the way of advancing equality for LGBTQI+ people.

In addition, the church occupies a significant place in Ukrainian public discourse, where one can often hear that it is precisely the Orthodox religion that is inherent to the Ukrainian people. The main Orthodox holidays, in particular, are official days off in Ukraine, which helps integrate the religious themes connected with them into contemporary culture. Orthodoxy thus informally finds itself in a privileged position compared both with other religious teachings and with a non-religious worldview. At the same time, from the point of view of the Orthodox Church, homosexual relationships are presented as a “sin” that must be fought and eradicated – and although some priests do not share this view, they are in the minority against the background of the church hierarchs and the general position of the AUCCRO.

As a result, from the standpoint of the right to freedom of worldview, non-heterosexual people find themselves in an unequal position both when they profess the Orthodox faith and when they hold other views. In the first case, they face condemnation in the religious environment simply for who they are, or are forced to conceal it. In the second, sexual orientation itself may be regarded as a consequence or a component of “sinful” worldview positions. Taken together, this can not only stand in the way of exercising the right in question, but also lead to exclusion from certain social circles and to discrimination.

Recommendation

Develop a monitoring mechanism within state bodies to prevent undue influence on them by the church and religious organizations.

Just as with freedom of thought and speech, in Ukraine there are no state restrictions on peaceful assembly on SOGIESC grounds. At the same time, throughout the whole period since LGBTQI+ people began to organize and publicly declare themselves as a social group, holding such assemblies has met with obstacles and resistance.

In particular, if we recall the history of the LGBTQI+ Pride (which later came to be called the “Equality March”) in Kyiv:

The first attempt to hold the march was in 2012, but it was ultimately abandoned because of numerous threats from far-right organizations.
In 2013 a very limited number of people took part in the march, and its location, where it took place surrounded by a dense cordon of what was then still the militia, was kept secret because of threats.
In 2014 the march was canceled, again because of threats, and the militia refused to ensure that the event could be held safely.
In 2015 the location of the event was also not announced publicly, but was sent to participants after registration. Despite this, far-right activists found out about it and first attacked the main column, where police officers were the ones mainly injured, and then chased participants who fled from them through courtyards.
Starting in 2016, the “Equality March” was held openly on the city’s central streets. Unprecedented measures were taken to ensure its safety: closing off the area where it took place and police screening at the entrance; shutting down the nearest metro stations; special metro trains to take participants away once the march was over. The number of police involved in these measures was comparable to, and sometimes greater than, the number of those taking part in the march. Far-right activists, meanwhile, regularly gathered for counter-assemblies, threatened physical violence and in some cases carried out attacks. In addition, after the march they staged a so-called “safari” on the city streets, chasing essentially everyone who in their view looked like an LGBTQI+ person.
To this can be added a number of cases from other peaceful assemblies in various Ukrainian cities that were directly related to LGBTQI+ topics or involved the active participation of openly LGBTQI+ people, where there were threats, condemnations of holding such events, attempts at disruption, attacks, refusals to cooperate on the part of local authorities or the police, as well as inadequate investigation of incidents that occurred during the event.

The main source of such opposition, as already noted, is organized far-right movements that profess the ideology of “traditional values,” of which cisheteronormativity is a component. At the same time, they usually present it as inherent in patriotism and nationalism as such, thereby trying to legitimize their homophobia and transphobia. Tellingly, the marches and public actions held by these movements themselves mostly proceed calmly and without hindrance, which is clear evidence of actual inequality on SOGIESC grounds in terms of exercising the right to peaceful assembly.

Besides far-right resistance itself, the other side of the problem is insufficient action by government and law enforcement bodies. Although in recent years there has been a trend toward improvement – and thanks to the efforts not so much of the state as of civil society organizations that work with the police – it can be noted that in most cases far-right activists have borne no responsibility for their threats and attacks. This creates a sense of impunity and sends the signal that they can repeat such actions again and again, whereas a firm response would, on the contrary, encourage them to stop. The police, if they open cases on such incidents at all, usually investigate them as “hooliganism.” Because of this, attackers often get off with the minimum punishment of a small fine. The fact that the attacks are committed precisely out of intolerance on SOGIESC grounds is not taken into account.

This is also facilitated by imperfect legislation, in which the provision most applicable to such cases is Article 161 of the Criminal Code, “Violation of citizens’ equality based on their race, nationality, regional affiliation, religious beliefs, disability and other characteristics.” Although for such acts committed by organized groups it provides for imprisonment for a term of 5 to 8 years, the absence of SOGIESC characteristics in its text in explicit form means that in practice it is not applied. The only case known at the time of writing in which Article 161 was nevertheless applied, with an indication that the crime was motivated by “discrimination on certain grounds, which in this particular case were manifested by a single collective term, ‘transgender identity,’” concerned an attack on a transgender woman in Lviv. However, no organized group was involved there, and the attacker got off with almost the minimum possible punishment – a fine.

The situation could be remedied by bill No. 5488, which is meant to enshrine in law the definition of intolerance and, accordingly, of a hate crime, as well as an appropriate punishment for it, including on SOGI grounds. It was proposed back in 2021, but at the time of writing it has still not been considered by the Verkhovna Rada, which does nothing to bring closer a solution to the problem of obstructing peaceful assemblies of LGBTQI+ people.

Recommendations:

Introduce legislation to counter hate crimes on SOGIESC grounds;
Carry out awareness-raising activities on SOGIESC issues within law enforcement agencies so that they properly do their job of maintaining public order during peaceful assemblies and demonstrations connected with these topics.

This article provides that the ability to work in the job of one’s choice must not depend on SOGIESC characteristics either. In practice, however, there are many accounts from LGBTQI+ people of being refused employment, dismissed or pressured in one way or another at their workplace, indirectly forcing them to leave because of their SOGIESC. Transgender people encounter this especially often while transitioning, when their identity documents do not match their gender identity and expression.

In 2015, as already mentioned, an amendment to the Labor Code was adopted banning discrimination in the sphere of labor on a number of grounds, including SOGI. Tellingly, it was possible to adopt it largely because this was one of the conditions for introducing a visa-free regime with the EU for Ukraine. Moreover, the vote on it was the hardest compared with the other “visa-free laws” precisely because of the presence of SOGI. Also, in 2022 a state guarantee of the right to protection in this sphere from any manifestations of discrimination on SOGI grounds was added to the Law “On Employment of the Population.”

Years later, however, we can say that LGBTQI+ people in Ukraine still continue to face such discrimination. In particular, the Nash Svit LGBTQI+ Human Rights Center recorded 5 such cases in 2024 as well. To some extent this can be linked to the fact that such discrimination often takes indirect forms. For example, when a trans person is refused a job with the general wording “you are not right for us,” but from the interview as a whole it is obvious that they were found unsuitable precisely after their transgender identity became known. Or when a gay man, once his orientation is discovered, begins to be threatened or subjected to inflated demands so that in the end he decides to resign himself. In such cases, when SOGI is not named directly as the reason for the discriminatory treatment, proving the fact of discrimination can be difficult. Moreover, LGBTQI+ people themselves often do not even try to seek justice, understanding that it will require great effort and doubting that it will succeed.

Clearly, under these conditions, additional measures beyond the law itself are needed for it to work properly. On the one hand, this means awareness-raising work aimed at employers in order to overcome their stereotypes about LGBTQI+ people, and a state information policy consisting in openly supporting the inadmissibility of discrimination. On the other hand, these are mechanisms that would make it easier to prove cases of indirect discrimination, as well as raising awareness of them within law enforcement agencies. As long as this is absent, the right to work, including protection against unlawful dismissal, is not properly respected for LGBTQI+ people in Ukraine.

Recommendations:

Carry out awareness-raising work aimed at employers in order to increase their awareness of LGBTQI+ topics and to overcome homophobia, biphobia and transphobia;
Develop and introduce mechanisms for more effective action against discrimination in the sphere of labor, in particular against its indirect forms.

As in the case of the right to work, reality here diverges from what is declared in the Constitution, since LGBTQI+ people also face discrimination in the sphere of housing – in particular, refusal to rent to them and unlawful eviction from housing. This happens precisely when their SOGIESC becomes known. Those at greatest risk when renting housing are trans people in cases where their appearance does not match their passport data because of a transition not yet completed in legal terms, and same-sex couples, since in these cases their sexual orientation and/or gender identity may become obvious even without coming out. Also at risk are young LGBTQI+ people living with parents who do not accept their SOGIESC – the latter may throw them out or resort to violence, creating conditions in which leaving the shared home becomes the better option.

Ukrainian legislation has no separate remedies against discrimination in the sphere of housing. At the same time, the general anti-discrimination law covers this sphere, but, as already noted, it does not contain SOGIESC characteristics in explicit form. As a result, in practice it is not applied in such cases.

LGBTQI+ people who are forced to leave their homes because of the homophobia, biphobia or transphobia of those around them – and now, during the war, also those who have left occupied or frontline territories – often need temporary housing. However, the shelters provided by the state are mostly not inclusive of LGBTQI+ people. Most of them are intended for women who have survived violence, and even with such a gender specialization trans women and lesbians may encounter hostile treatment there. LGBTQI+ civil society organizations try to compensate for this situation in part, but on a nationwide scale their capacity is insufficient. In this aspect, too, the ability to exercise the right to housing is therefore unequal on SOGIESC grounds.

Recommendations:

Introduce a statutory ban on discrimination in the sphere of housing on SOGIESC grounds;
Work to make state social housing inclusive of LGBTQI+ people.

The medical care needs of LGBTQI+ people can be conditionally divided into two categories: those whose specific nature is connected precisely with SOGIESC particularities, and all the rest. Let us emphasize that meeting specific needs cannot be considered “special rights,” just as, for example, they are not considered such for people with disabilities. In both cases these are components of the right to health care, the realization of which may require different means for different people and social groups.

Medical needs of the second category are characterized by not requiring anyone to come out, which accordingly reduces the risk of encountering discrimination. Although when SOGIESC does become known, it can occur. Thus, in individual cases doctors have refused to provide care to LGBTQI+ people, citing the fact that these people’s SOGIESC particularities fall outside their competence, even though the medical services requested of them had nothing to do with those particularities. In other cases doctors refused simply because of SOGIESC, without explaining the reasons.

Specific needs include:

gynecological and sexological services for women who have sex with women;
andrological and sexological services for men who have sex with men;
medical services connected with gender transition: psychiatric, psychotherapeutic, endocrinological, surgical;
medical services for trans people and intersex people connected with the health of their reproductive organs (since these may be different from those of cis people with the same gender identity);
reproductive services for any LGBTQI+ people (since they involve the use of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) taking SOGIESC particularities into account).

The factors that hinder the realization of the right to health care when seeking such services are as follows:

Discriminatory attitudes on the part of doctors

This manifests itself in the same way as in the case of any other medical services.

Lack of competence

The source of the problem is that LGBTQI+-related issues are practically absent from the curricula of medical universities. So doctors who master these topics largely do so on their own enthusiasm, at their own expense, and also with the support of civil society organizations that run training events and/or bring in specialists from abroad for professional development. On a national scale, however, this is not enough, so LGBTQI+ people often have to spend extra time looking for friendly, competent doctors – in particular, turning to ones in another region.

Restrictions on certain medical services:

For transgender people, the transition procedure under the current clinical protocol requires that any medical intervention be preceded by a psychiatric diagnosis of “Transsexualism.” If it is not made, or if some other diagnosis is made instead (which in individual cases also happens because of doctors’ incompetence or bias), then other medical interventions for transitioning, such as hormone therapy and especially surgical operations, will not be available.
The diagnosis of “Transsexualism” in itself limits access to ART, namely to “infertility treatment funded from the state budget” under an order of the Ministry of Health. In addition, under the medical guarantees program, free infertility treatment services are provided according to sex, where a person’s female or male civil sex is directly linked to female or male reproductive organs. This makes such services inaccessible to trans people who have retained their congenital reproductive organs after transition, as well as to some intersex people.
Because their family relationships are in no way recognized by the state, same-sex couples cannot receive ART services as a family. Thus, if a couple of two women or two men approaches a clinic for such services, only one of them will be able to sign the contract with the clinic, as a single person. And all the formal procedures in the process of providing the services will proceed on that basis, in accordance with the Ministry of Health’s “Procedure for the Use of Assisted Reproductive Technologies in Ukraine”.

Taken together, it can be said that eliminating inequality with regard to the right to health requires comprehensive solutions. In part they concern the legislative level – in particular, the introduction of ICD-11, which should entail updating a number of medical standards and clinical protocols connected with being transgender. But perhaps even more important are awareness-raising measures – above all, the inclusion of LGBTQI+ topics in their relevant medical aspects in specialized curricula.

Recommendations:

Include information about diverse SOGIESC and their specific features in the curricula of medical educational institutions;
Include free medical services connected with the specific needs of trans people and intersex people in the medical guarantees program;
Review and repeal discriminatory restrictions on LGBTQI+ people’s access to reproductive medical services.

With this article it is worth noting first that its text differs from other similar articles that deal with rights. Whereas those begin by formulating the right they are devoted to, here the concept of marriage is introduced first – and not through a definition, but rather through an outline that contains an implicit restriction. That is, it does not state directly that only a woman and a man may enter into a marriage with each other, only that it “is based on the free consent” of such persons. The constitutional wording thus already restricts same-sex couples from having the rights of spouses – but somewhat obliquely, leaving room for it to be interpreted differently depending on the context. The Family Code, meanwhile, states directly: “Marriage is the family union of a woman and a man, registered with a state civil registry authority.”

At the same time, a family is not necessarily a married couple, but any “persons who live together, are bound by a common household and have mutual rights and obligations” (the definition from Article 3 of the Family Code, “Family”). Under that same article, moreover, a family “is created on the basis of marriage, blood kinship, adoption, and also on other grounds not prohibited by law and not contrary to the moral principles of society”; in addition, a single person has the rights of a family member. On the one hand, these definitions of family are broad enough to be extended to LGBTQI+ families, including those with children. On the other hand, the “moral principles of society” are a rather vague category, which adherents of so-called “traditional family values” may interpret as excluding LGBTQI+ people. So in the absence of additional clarifications (for example, in other legal acts), this ambiguity in particular life situations has in practice to be resolved by a court decision.

Be that as it may, legal mechanisms under which the family unions of LGBTQI+ people would receive the same state protection, even without being called marriages, are at least theoretically possible. Let us look at the extent to which such possibilities have been realized in Ukraine.

First of all, we must note that Ukrainian legislation currently does not provide for the registration of family relationships in any form other than marriage. The need to introduce the institution of civil partnerships in Ukraine – for both same-sex and different-sex couples – has been raised at the state level since 2015, when the task of drafting the relevant legislation was included in the Action Plan for implementing the National Human Rights Strategy for 2015–2020. In fact, however, such a bill appeared in Ukraine only in 2023, submitted by Inna Sovsun, an MP from the Holos party. Since then it has been supported by several committees of the Verkhovna Rada, but the prospects for its adoption are still uncertain.

Apart from registering a relationship, there are opportunities to regulate individual aspects of it, such as property, inheritance and so on. For the most part this is possible by concluding notarized contracts and powers of attorney. The very need to resort to separate measures for different situations, and to pay separately for each of them, where a different-sex couple need only get married, already points to inequality. But even by resorting to them, a same-sex family gets no guarantee of the desired outcome. In particular, in the following matters:

Making decisions about treatment If a person from a same-sex family is admitted to hospital and, because of their state of health, cannot make decisions about their treatment and other medical interventions on their own, their partner has no right to make such decisions either, because for the state they are not a family and are, legally speaking, nobody to each other. In theory this issue can be resolved through powers of attorney, but that requires extra time, expense and constant renewal of such documents. And they also do not give a 100% guarantee, whereas for different-sex couples everything is resolved automatically by getting married and requires no additional effort.
Disposing of the body and arranging the funeral Same-sex families cannot exercise this right in respect of a deceased partner, because in the legal field they are nobody to each other. A power of attorney does not solve this problem, since such a document ceases to be valid at the moment of the principal’s death. It is possible to draw up a will specifying who will arrange the funeral and the form of the ritual (burial or cremation), under Article 1240 of the Civil Code of Ukraine. But if, for example, the deceased person’s parents had a negative attitude toward their child’s family and were on bad terms with them, there is a considerable risk that they will contest the will, go to court and create additional stressful situations. Different-sex couples are automatically spared such problems in the legal sphere by getting married.
Representing a child’s interests In LGBTQI+ families with children the same questions of upbringing and care arise as in different-sex families, but this right cannot be exercised in full. A partner who is not a biological relative is legally nobody to the child and cannot, for example, make decisions about the child’s treatment or represent and defend the child’s interests at kindergarten, school, university and so on. For this, the biological parent has to draw up a power of attorney for such actions. There may be two or even five such documents, which requires time and additional expense for the family, as well as the need to carry these documents around at all times. Once again, in different-sex couples this question does not even arise, because it is automatically resolved by getting married.

Also, in a number of situations where relatives’ rights come into conflict with one another, marriage gives priority to the husband or wife. In the case of notarized contracts or other legal documents, since they do not establish kinship between those who conclude them, priority remains with close relatives rather than with the partner. This applies to situations of:

Inheriting property If movable and/or immovable property belongs to one person in an LGBTQI+ family, then after their death the other cannot inherit it by law, that is, where there is no will. The grounds for inheritance by law are: kinship; the procedure for re-registering property located in territory outside government control; family relations; marriage; adoption; and having been a dependent of the testator for at least 5 years before their death. A spouse belongs to the first order of heirs (Article 1261 of the Civil Code of Ukraine), but this does not extend to same-sex families. One option may be for the partner to apply to a court to prove that they were a dependent of the testator for at least 5 years before their death. But if they were not a dependent, or if they lived together as a family for less than 5 years, this will not work. Another option may be a will. Unfortunately, case law shows that it can be contested, and this is what likely awaits an LGBTQI+ family if relations with the testator’s relatives are bad. So once again, the absence of marriage does not provide the protection of rights and obligations that different-sex couples acquire upon entering into it.
Inheriting a bank deposit For example, an LGBTQI+ family saves money together to buy a shared house, take a vacation, do renovations and so on. The deposit is opened in the name of one person in the couple, with the right of the other to add to it. If the owner of the deposit does not manage to leave instructions about it in the event of their death, then this inheritance is treated as part of the general estate and is inherited by law (Article 1228 of the Civil Code of Ukraine). In other words, the partner has no right whatsoever to this deposit.
Custody of children After the death of the biological parent in an LGBTQI+ family, the other parent, despite active participation in raising and supporting their partner’s child, has no automatic right to continue caring for the child. Many difficulties may arise because of the child’s age (whether the child can already be heard in adoption proceedings) and the presence of other relatives of the biological parent who may wish to obtain guardianship over their grandchild, niece or nephew, depending on the form of kinship. A parent may draw up a will indicating their wish to appoint the partner as sole guardian. This will be a supporting but, unfortunately, not a decisive factor. In such cases neither the partner nor the child is protected by law, whereas where a marriage has been entered into this is not even a matter for discussion.

There are also rights and obligations less often mentioned in this context, such as rights and obligations under a rent-to-own housing agreement, a contract for the purchase and sale of an indivisible unfinished construction object/future real estate object (first sale), or a contract for participation in a construction financing fund. These are also inherited and, accordingly, in a same-sex family the same problems with inheritance arise here.

It is clear from the examples above that outside marriage same-sex families in Ukraine are in fact deprived of a number of rights, where the mechanisms for exercising these rights involve additional difficulties while still not guaranteeing that they will be observed. Let us note that even if the above-mentioned bill No. 9103 on registered partnerships or a similar one is adopted, there will be no full equality of rights, since it does not provide for the possibility of partners adopting children. As for introducing in Ukraine the possibility of marriage between persons of the same civil sex, this question has not so far even been put on the agenda by any of the political parties and figures represented in parliament.

Recommendation

Introduce legislation under which same-sex couples could register their relationships as family relationships with rights and obligations analogous to those of spouses in a marriage.

Formally, Ukrainian legislation contains no restrictions on obtaining an education on SOGIESC grounds. But the realization of this right also depends on the environment in educational institutions – on whether it really provides equal conditions for school and university students regardless of their SOGIESC.

In practice, LGBTQI+ school and university students are often subjected to harassment. Thus, the “Second National Study of the School Environment for LGBTQI+ Teenagers” of 2019/2020 found that 59% of LGBTQI+ children hear verbal insults addressed to them at school, 30% face physical violence and 49% face sexual violence. 87% of LGBTQI+ children feel excluded from school life. Moreover, 69% of students who received homophobic insults also heard these expressions from teachers and the school administration. And 55% of LGBTQI+ children reported that there is no adult at their school they could turn to for help.

If LGBTQI+ students, fearing that they will face homophobia, biphobia or transphobia, choose not to come out and to conceal their SOGIESC, they have to make a separate effort to do so, and their engagement in the learning process suffers as a result. This applies especially to transgender school and university students, for whom such concealment begins with the name and gendered forms used to address them, which causes them additional emotional suffering.

The results of the first national study of the school environment noted that students who were subjected to a high level of verbal harassment because of their sexual orientation and/or gender expression skipped school more often, have lower academic performance and display lower levels of self-esteem. They also want to end their education at the lower secondary level significantly more often than those who do not face such harassment.

Since 2019, the Law “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine on Countering Bullying (Harassment)” has been in force in Ukraine. It does not, however, mention LGBTQI+ students as one of the groups vulnerable to harassment, which makes it less effective in countering it on SOGIESC grounds – especially given that the source of such harassment is often the school staff themselves.

Also, as already noted, state educational curricula in Ukraine contain no information about the diversity of SOGIESC. This not only creates a cisheteronormative atmosphere in educational institutions, which in every way contributes to the harassment mentioned above, but also stands in the way of LGBTQI+ students’ self-discovery as a component of their right to education.

Recommendations

Introduce a statutory ban on discrimination in the sphere of education on SOGIESC grounds;
Include information about diverse SOGIESC in state educational curricula.

This right is enshrined in Ukrainian legislation in Article 385 of the Criminal Code, which likewise provides for the absence of criminal liability for refusing to testify about oneself, family members or close relatives. Their circle, in turn, is defined by the Criminal Procedure Code as “husband, wife, father, mother, stepfather, stepmother, son, daughter, stepson, stepdaughter, full brother, full sister, grandfather, grandmother, great-grandfather, great-grandmother, grandson, granddaughter, great-grandson, great-granddaughter, adopter or adoptee, guardian or custodian, a person under guardianship or custody, as well as persons who live together, are bound by a common household and have mutual rights and obligations, including persons who live together but are not married.” As can be seen, LGBTQI+ couples fall here only under the last category, but the fact that they live together still needs to be proven – as a rule, through the courts.

Thus, compared with heterosexual married couples, partners in LGBTQI+ unions are, in the absence of state registration of them as families, effectively deprived of the opportunity to refuse to testify about each other.

Recommendation

Introduce legislation under which same-sex couples could register their relationships and be recognized as family members.

Recommendation

See the recommendations for all the previous articles.

Conclusions

Now, returning to the question posed in the title of this text, we can state that there are at least 11 constitutional rights of Ukrainian citizens that LGBTQI+ people, given their SOGIESC, cannot exercise as freely as other citizens. This list includes:

the right to free development of one’s personality

the right to respect for personal dignity

the right to freedom of thought and speech

the right to freedom of worldview and religion

the right to peaceful assembly

the right to work

the right to housing

the right to health care

the right to family

the right to education

the right to refuse to give testimony concerning family members

In addition, with regard to LGBTQI+ people, the principle of equality of rights and freedoms for all citizens established by the Constitution is not upheld, nor is the obligation not to encroach upon the rights and freedoms of others. This situation is driven by the following general factors:

low awareness of SOGIESC issues both in society at large and among professionals (police officers, medical workers and others);

a high level of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in society;

the presence of movements that deliberately campaign against equal rights for LGBTQI+ people (far-right groups, churches and others);

the lack of legislative provisions that would protect human rights on the grounds of SOGIESC (the absence of these grounds in anti-discrimination legislation, the lack of regulation of transition for intersex people and of so-called conversion therapy, and so on);

the presence of individual legislative provisions that restrict rights on the grounds of SOGIESC (marriage being unavailable to same-sex couples, reproductive technologies being unavailable to certain categories of people, and so on).

To overcome these factors and to ensure that the rights listed above are genuinely observed on an equal basis, the State must take action – above all the measures set out in this text in the recommendations to each article.

Author
Inna Iryskina
Analytical Manager
Insight NGO
Consultant
Hanna Lytvynova
Head of the Legal Department at Insight NGO

Analytical Manager

Inna Iryskina

A trans woman, currently the analytical manager of Insight and an expert on transgender issues. I used to write science fiction; now I write brainy analytical, educational and opinion pieces.

My path into human rights began with personal experience. When I started my transition, I quickly felt first-hand how complicated and hard it is in Ukraine. At first I came to Insight simply looking for support, but along the way I realised: I myself have something to offer to change the situation for the better. And pushing for these changes together is much easier.

Human rights are a basic, unshakeable value for me. I am convinced that every human being is a unique personality who must be able to express themselves freely in society. It is precisely to secure this freedom that human rights must be protected.

I define my political stance as egalitarian individual-centrism. I stand for equal rights and basic opportunities for everyone, where the group exists for the person, not the person for the group. I believe that access to positions of power and to socially significant decision-making should depend solely on the level of professionalism. I hold a scientific picture of the world, I am an agnostic and a convinced supporter of progressive values.

What fuels me:

I am a person of texts. When I manage to lay out a complex thought beautifully, clearly and understandably, I get genuine aesthetic pleasure from it. But what charges and inspires me most is feedback: when my texts resonate with someone and help them understand or rethink something.

Blitz interview:

What do you do when you are not saving human rights?
I love walking in nature, listening to electronic music (I used to write a little myself) and watching Formula 1 broadcasts.

One sentence about yourself that is not a job title:
I structure, systematise, bring in the constructive, and dot all the i’s.

Three words that describe you:
Thoughtful, goal-oriented, principled.

A queer watch you recommend?
Breakfast on Pluto. I first watched it exactly when I was weighing up my transition. The main character and the film as a whole gave me such a mood that it became a matter of time rather than of whether to do it at all.

Publications, interviews and media archive:

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