Japan’s parliament elected ultraconservative Sanae Takaichi as the country’s first female prime minister Tuesday, a day after her struggling party struck a coalition deal with a new partner expected to pull her governing bloc further to the right.
Takaichi replaces Shigeru Ishiba, ending a three-month political vacuum and wrangling since the Liberal Democratic Party’s disastrous election loss in July. While she is the first woman serving as Japan’s prime minister, she is in no rush to promote gender equality or diversity.
Takaichi is among Japanese politicians who have stonewalled measures for women’s advancement. Takaichi supports the imperial family’s male-only succession and opposes same-sex marriage and allowing separate surnames for married couples.
An estimated 1.2 billion people could be forced to migrate by 2050 due to extreme weather and natural disasters related to climate change. The hardships of relocating and sharing limited survival resources will fall hardest on LGBTQ+ climate refugees, numerous experts say.
In 2023, London’s Pride parade was briefly halted by a small group of LGBTQ+ activists with U.K.-based climate justice coalition Just Stop Oil protesting the event’s inclusion of floats and sponsorships from high polluting industries.
Ahead of their demonstration, the LGBTQ+ supporters of Just Stop Oil released a statement explaining that they would take action to oppose the government’s continued development of new fossil fuel projects in the face of scientific consensus that such projects threaten “the collapse of our food systems and the breakdown of ordered society.”
The climate crisis, they wrote, “has already killed, and made homeless, millions of people including many LGBTQ+ people.”
“Due to their position at the margins of society, LGBTQI+ people are especially vulnerable.”Climate campaigner, Lily O’Mara
“In the coming decades, hundreds of millions of people are likely to be forced from their homes as conditions become unsuitable for human survival,” the statement continued. “It is queer people, and particularly queer people of colour in the global south, who are suffering first in this accelerating social breakdown.”
The activists at the 2023 London Pride parade were just a handful of voices in a growing chorus raising the alarm about climate displacement and the unique impact it will have on LGBTQ+ people.
In 2020, the Institute for Economics & Peace’s inaugural Ecological Threat Register estimated that by 2050, 1.2 billion people could be displaced around the world due to the effects of rising global temperatures and resultant environmental disasters and political upheaval.
Already, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees(UNHCR), an annual average of 21.5 million people around the world were displaced from their homes by floods, storms, wildfires, extreme temperature, and other weather-related catastrophes between 2008 and 2016.
As the Center for Climate and Security notes, climate change has been widely described, including by the UNHCR, as a “threat multiplier,” exacerbating risk both for people in already unstable regions and for the socio-economically disadvantaged.
LGBTQ+ people who are forced to migrate from climate-vulnerable areas are similarly likely to face discrimination and harassment on their journey to and in refugee camps.
As writer and researcher Lily O’Mara noted in a 2023 piece for Earth.org, “Due to their position at the margins of society, LGBTQI+ people are especially vulnerable” to the widening inequalities that will inevitably result from increased climate catastrophe, with queer women and LGBTQ+ people of color bearing the brunt.
The risks for LGBTQ+ people are manifold and intersectional
A 2024 report from the Williams Institute found that gay and bi couples in the United States are more likely to live in coastal areas and cities, as well as in counties with an increased risk of adverse climate change effects, including extreme cold, heat waves, excessive precipitation, and dry conditions.
These couples are also more likely to live in areas with poorer infrastructure and access to resources, which means they’re “less prepared to respond and adapt to natural hazards and other climate disruptions,” the report said.
As Eoin Jackson explained in a 2023 piece for the Harvard International Law Journal, many countries in regions that will likely see the most immediate impact of climate change — Northern Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East — already have poor track records on LGBTQ+ rights.
Both Jackson and O’Mara warn that in these regions, religious leaders could likely blame LGBTQ+ people for climate-related crises. Jackson cites LGBTQ+ people being blamed for outbreaks of COVID-19 in Nigeria, Liberia, and Zimbabwe, while O’Mara cites religious leaders in New Zealand, Malaysia, Israel, Haiti, and even the U.S. blaming sexual minorities for earthquakes and hurricanes. As climate catastrophes increase, LGBTQ+ people will likely be forced to flee their homes due to increased persecution as well as natural disasters.
Flooded homes along a coastline. | Shutterstock
As countries grapple with the economic effects of climate change, Jackson notes, LGBTQ+ people, and particularly transgender people, will also likely be some of the first to be denied resources, like access to jobs and affordable housing.
When disaster does strike, queer and trans people are likely to face discrimination when trying to access aid. Even in the U.S., O’Mara notes, research has shown that LGBTQ+ people “experience barriers to proper healthcare, difficulty accessing food and water rations, and securing emergency shelters after being displaced by environmental disasters.”
We must reject the view that climate change affects people indiscriminately and recognize the specific ways it affects LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.
Those who are forced to migrate from climate-vulnerable areas are similarly likely to face discrimination and harassment on their journey to and in refugee camps, according to O’Mara. They will also face barriers to claiming refugee status under existing international law.
Jackson cites Teitiota v. New Zealand, a case in which the UN Human Rights Committee upheld New Zealand’s Immigration and Protection Tribunal’s decision to deny Ioene Teitiota’s application for refugee status due to the effects of climate change on his home country, Kiribati in the Pacific Ocean region of Micronesia.
“In doing so, the Court did not acknowledge the particular vulnerabilities that marginalized people experience because of climate change,” Jackson notes. “If courts view climate change as affecting everyone equally it is more difficult to justify why LGBTQI+ people are uniquely vulnerable to its effects.”
A refugee camp | Shutterstock
O’Mara, meanwhile, notes that other routes to climate asylum, like family reunification, pose unique difficulties for LGBTQ+ people, many of whom may be estranged or disowned by their families of origin.
Given current anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe and the U.S., these hurdles are unlikely to become easier, even as the worsening effects of the climate crisis force more people to flee their homes.
The future is not yet written — the time to act is now
Beyond immediate action to mitigate the effects of climate change, both Jackson and O’Mara call for a broader understanding of the intersectional nature of the climate crisis’ impact on LGBTQ+ people around the world.
Jackson writes that the international community must recognize “how and why the effects of climate change are human-oriented, and therefore in line with our perception of persecution,” thus broadening the interpretation of persecution under the UN Refugee Convention. We must also reject the view that climate change affects people indiscriminately and recognize the specific ways it affects LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.
O’Mara also stresses the necessity of LGBTQ+ specific research on the impacts of the climate crisis and the importance of LGBTQ+ voices leading the way in developing policy.
There’s hard work ahead, but both O’Mara and Jackson stress that there is a way forward. From reforming the UN Refugee Convention to better reflect the specific circumstances of LGBTQ+ people to working to reduce the effects of climate change, the time to act is now.
The number of anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes recorded by police in England and Wales have marginally decreased, but they are still not figures to celebrate.
Home Office figures published on Thursday (9 October) show in the year ending March 2025 there were a total of 115,990 hate crime offences, up from 113,166 the year previous year, which marks a two per cent increase.
Notably, these figures exclude the Met Police due to a change in the way in which the force’s data is recorded, hence its numbers are excluded from year-on-year comparisons. Because the Met Police covers the UK’s largest LGBTQ+ population (London), its exclusion likely under-represents national totals for LGBTQ+ hate crime.
It’s also important to note that recorded hate crimes reflect police‐recorded / reported incidents only and not necessarily the true prevalence of hate crime. Many hate crimes go unreported and changes in reporting practices, public awareness and police recording practices etc. all influence the numbers.
So, with these caveats out of the way, what do the 2024/2025 figures actually say?
LGBTQ+ hate crime figures in England and Wales ‘deeply worrying’ despite slight drop (Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Well, in terms of LGBTQ+ hate crime, there was a 2 per cent decrease in offences related to sexual orientation and an 11 per cent decrease in offences related to transgender identity.
In 2023/24 there were 19,127 hate crimes recorded related to sexual orientation which dropped two per cent to 18,702 in 2024/25, while there was an 11 per cent drop in anti-trans hate crime from 4,258 to 3,809.
Despite the decrease, both sets of 2024/25 data are still higher than they were five years ago. In the year ending March 2020, there were 105,090 hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales,
As has been seen in previous years, race hate crimes accounted for the majority of police recorded hate crimes, with 82,490 offences recorded. This was up six per cent on the previous year but still remains below the peak of 87,905 offences seen in March 2022.
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This year’s religious hate crime data shows a three per cent rise from 6,973 to 7,164 offences.
Religious hate crime targeted specifically at Muslims rose by 19 per cent, from 2,690 to 3,199 offences.
Hate crime targeted at members of the Jewish community went down from 2,093 to 1,715 offences, or 18 per cent, during the same period. However, the Home Office urged caution as such figures exclude Metropolitan Police data which recorded 40 per cent of all religious hate crimes targeted at Jewish people the previous year.
Stonewall’s statement:
Issuing a statement following the release of the statistics, CEO of Stonewall Simon Blake said: “Unsurprisingly, the Home Office statistics released today show that overall hate crime continues to rise, which is damaging for our neighbourhoods, communities and society.”
“Yet, these numbers don’t tell the full story for the LGBTQ+ community,” Blake continued. “Today’s headline data focuses on hate crimes reported outside of London and excludes the Met Police numbers due to reporting changes, which will inevitably affect LGBTQ+ data because of where many LGBTQ+ people live.
“Trust in the Police has also fallen more widely, compounding what we already know – that LGBTQ+ people often don’t report hate crimes.
“No one should have to live somewhere where they don’t feel safe.
“The stories we hear every day tell us that LGBTQ+ people are experiencing more hate and are living in fear, especially following the April Supreme Court judgment, a period that doesn’t fall within these statistics.
LGBTQ+ refugees may face outing in their home countries before being dragged through an archaic asylum system that forces them to ‘prove’ their identities to complete strangers, case studies from a refugee charity shared for National Coming Out Day show.
National Coming Out Day takes place every year on 11 October and was first celebrated in 1988, with the date marking the one year anniversary of the the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. It was created to honour LGBTQ+ people who decided to come out and live their lives openly as queer people.
Coming out is a deeply personal and individual experience for LGBTQ+ folks and people can ‘come out’ at any age.
For some, it won’t be a big deal at all and might something they do off-hand or causally – such as explaining what their identity is or introducing their partner to friends or family – but for others it can be very challenging, especially if they come from communities where anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination is commonplace.
For LGBTQ+ refugees, the coming out process can be a dangerous and upsetting one, with queer people facing rejection from family and friends, abuse, criminal charges or even the death penalty.
For National Coming Out Day 2025, PinkNews heard case studies from two people who are supported by LGBTQ+ refugee charity Rainbow Migration about their experiences with coming out.
Jalal, a gay man from Morocco, explained he lived his whole life there until he moved to the UK at the start of 2021 to undertake a higher degree.
“You’ll have to leave or he’s going to kill you”
“In one of my visits home, I had a huge confrontation with my family,” he explained. “I brought a lot of clothes and other items, knowing my family normally would not touch any of my stuff, like my phone.
“But this time, I was really surprised when my mum took the opportunity to go through my stuff when I wasn’t looking.
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“Thinking back on it, I think she was very suspicious about my lifestyle in the UK. Every time we video called, I would keep it short and always say the same things, so she wanted to know more.
“She found my letters and a picture of me and my ex.
“When I got back, she was holding all the things I was hiding, and we had a fight.
“I had to go back to my room for safety because it was getting really violent. Eventually my parents told me to leave, or my dad was going to kill me. ”
Jalal explain his father “left the house to cool off” and his mum told him: “Once he’s back, you’ll have to leave or he’s going to kill you.”
“So that’s what I did. I took my passport, my luggage and anything that I could grab.
“I went to stay in the cheapest hotel, waiting for the cheapest flight ticket [back to London]. Eventually, I took the flight. I needed three days before I applied for asylum to just process everything. I was so tired from the flight.”
Once queer people reach the UK, the system can itself be discriminatory in the way it asks LGBTQ+ folks to ‘prove’ their identities to officials through evidence in order to be granted asylum.
As research from Rainbow Migration has previously shown, the UK governmentfrequently does not believe LGBTQ+ people seeking asylum and disregards testimony from friends and family which attests to an individual’s sexual or gender identity.
A bisexual woman from Pakistan who receives support from Rainbow Migration said of the system: “In my main interview, I had to talk about parts of my life I had buried deep.
“I had to explain trauma, abuse, and fear to strangers — and try to stay composed, because I knew they were watching closely to see if I was “credible enough.”
Nate Rae had always felt secure living openly since coming out as a transgender man in his late 20s — until a recent U.K. Supreme Court ruling on the legal definition of biological sex changed everything.
Now, Rae — a PhD student and science communicator who grew up in a small Scottish town before moving to London — says he finds himself constantly weighing risks and assessing where it is safe — or unsafe — for him to be.
In April, the court affirmed that under equality laws, the term “sex” refers to biological sex, meaning a transgender woman is legally considered male, and a transgender man is considered female.
Equality watchdog EHRC stated in its interim guidance on the ruling’s practical implications that transgender people should be barred from facilities and services, from toilets to hospital wards and refuges, designed for the gender they live as.
“It’s almost like it’s been made legal to harass trans people,” Rae, 33, told Reuters in an interview at Gay’s The Word, Britain’s oldest LGBTQ bookshop, saying he was now “hyper aware” of people noticing him.
“I’ve got to factor in things that I’d never had to factor in before,” he said. “Where can I go? Where am I safe?”
Transgender rights flashpoint
Rae, who only started to medically transition last year, often uses the women’s bathroom as he feels he is still largely perceived as female.
Since the ruling, Rae has been told several times that he cannot use a certain bathroom and has been called “disgusting” when using a female toilet. On one occasion, someone approached him to ask: “Do you know there are kids here?”
Transgender rights have become a political flashpoint in Britain and elsewhere. In the U.S., President Donald Trump has targeted the rights of transgender people in a series of executive orders.
Some critics of the policies say the conservative right has weaponized identity politics to attack minority groups.
But others argue that support for transgender people has infringed on the rights of biological women and their safety in spaces such as hospitals, prisons and domestic violence refuges.
Britain’s government said the judgement brought clarity and a clear position to underpin gender policies, but for many transgender people, including Rae, it has left them feeling excluded from parts of society.
A report released in August by transgender rights group TransActual highlighted how, since the ruling, some trans people have planned to leave the country, concealed their identities, avoided public spaces like hospitals, felt outed at work, or have withdrawn from social life altogether.
Asked about the detrimental impacts of the ruling cited by transgender people, a government spokesperson said laws were in place to protect trans individuals from discrimination and harassment.
Young trans people ‘terrified’
Following a consultation, the EHRC, which is responsible for enforcing equality laws, submitted its updated draft guidance to the government at the start of September and parliament is expected to consider it by the end of the year.
Keyne Walker, strategy director for TransActual, said the interim guidance is already having a “dire effect” and said the EHRC’s interpretation of the judgement could have been far less “extreme”.
Some organizations have already updated their transgender policies. The Football Association has barred transgender women from competing in women’s soccer in England, and the British Transport Police now requires same-sex searches in custody to be conducted according to a detainee’s biological sex.
A spokesperson for the EHRC said everything they had done since the judgement was grounded in the law, and the guidance shared with the government was both legally accurate and clear.
Rae fears the court’s decision will discourage people from living freely in their chosen gender and threatens their safety if they do, as it has shifted public perceptions of transgender people.
“Every young trans person I’ve spoken to is terrified,” said Rae, who teaches science to young people as part of his job, adding that many were now questioning: “Am I going to be able to live the life I want to live as the person I want to be?”
Following a playbook from Hungary and Russia’s leaders, Slovakia’s populist government on Friday passed an illiberal ragbag of measures in a constitutional amendment that defines sex as binary, bans adoption by same-sex couples, outlaws surrogacy, and asserts the E.U. member’s “national sovereignty in cultural and ethical matters.”
Prime Minister Robert Fico, whose coalition of populist, leftist, and nationalist parties has faced mounting demonstrations in the country’s capital, Bratislava, promoted the amendment as a bulwark against liberal ideology that was “spreading like cancer” in the central European state.
His populist-nationalist government argued the amendment was necessary to protect “traditional values.”
Fico said he would celebrate with a shot of liquor following the amendment’s knife-edge passage in the 150-seat Slovak National Council on Friday.
“This isn’t a little dam, or just a regular dam – this is a great dam against progressivism,” he declared to followers.
Fico leads a precarious coalition of parties across the political spectrum. His own Smer-Social Democracy party has morphed into a nationalist party far removed from the progressive values of Europe’s center-left mainstream that it was founded on.
Smer was suspended from the Party of European Socialists in 2023 after forming a coalition government with the country’s far-right Slovak National Party. It’s expected to be expelled at a gathering of European Socialists next month.
“The Slovak constitution has fallen victim to Robert Fico’s plan to dismantle the opposition and divert attention from the real problems of society, as well as the austerity measures he had to pass,” Beata Balagova, editor-in-chief of the Slovak daily SME, told the BBC.
“Fico does not genuinely care about gender issues, the ban on surrogate motherhood, or even adoptions by LGBTQ people,” she added.
Fico has met with Russian President Vladimir Putin four times in the last year.
Passage of the amendment was in doubt as late as Thursday.
The amendment required a three-fifths majority in the 150-seat National Council, or 90 votes, while Fico’s coalition only comprises 78 members. In the end, 12 opposition members, including several from former Prime Minister Igor Matovič’s movement, added their votes.
Igor Matovič described them as traitors.
Amnesty International said the vote brings Slovakia’s legal system closer to the authoritarian governments of Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Putin’s Russia.
“Today, the Slovak government chose to follow the lead of countries, such as Hungary, whose policies have led to an erosion of human rights,” it said in a statement.
Legal scholars in Slovakia have said that the amendment enshrining the primacy of the Slovak constitution over E.U. law sets up a direct challenge to the European Union and will doubtless lead to a showdown.
“Seeking to disapply specific rights because they touch upon ‘national identity’ would be fundamentally incompatible with the Slovak Republic’s international obligations,” said Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Michael O’Flaherty before the vote.
The bodies of three trans women have been found dumped on the side of the road in Karachi, Pakistan.
The gruesome find was made in the Memon Goth area of the city, the largest in Pakistan, on Sunday (21 September). Police spokesman Javed Ahmed Abro told the AFP news agency that the bodies were “bullet-riddled”. All three victims were shot at close range.
Syed Murad Ali Shah, the provincial chief minister for Sindh, the province in which Karachi is located, said: “Transgender persons are a vulnerable segment of society and we must all give them dignity and respect.”
Meanwhile, activists in the region described the deaths as an attempt to “silence” trans voices.
Trans rights campaigner Bindiya Rana told The Associated Press that violence aimed at trans people in Pakistan “is not new and it is deeply embedded in our society”, adding: “If the police fail to identify the killers, we will announce a countrywide protest.”
Fellow activist and Karachi councillor Shahzadi Rai said: “When hate speech and campaigns are carried out so openly, outcomes like this are inevitable. Even though the state and police are on our side, killings are still occurring, which indicates that deep-rooted hatred against transgender people persists in our society.”
Pakistan’s transgender community faces “deep-rooted hate”. (ASIF HASSAN/AFP via Getty Images)
According to the BBC, a report in the medical journal The Lancet in 2023 claimed that 90 per cent of transgender people in Pakistan have faced physical assaults.
A spokesperson for rights group Gender Interactive Alliance identified the women as “khawaja sira persons”, a term referring to the third-gender community in Pakistan, and cited an attack just days earlier.
“These back-to-back tragedies show that the khawaja sira community is being systematically targeted. This is not just about individual killings, it’s an attempt to terrorise and silence an entire community,” they said.
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Gender Interactive Alliance set out a series of demands, including calling on the police to conduct “immediate, transparent investigations and arrest all perpetrators”, the introduction of a specific protection unit for trans people, and new legislation to combat hate crime.
“The khawaja sira community will not remain silent, our lives are as valuable as every other citizens’,” the spokesperson added. “We demand justice. We demand protection.”
Despite being able to self-identify under the 2018 Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, the transgender community continues to face discrimination, abuse and harassment in the South Asian country.
Two trans women living in Mardan, a city about 30 miles east of Peshawar, were killed in their home in 2024, and a year earlier, Marvia Malik, the country’s first trans newsreader, survived an assassination attempt when two gunmen opened fire while she was at home.
Far-right Polish politician Dawid Szóstak has announced that he will leave his anti-LGBTQ+ Confederation political party after revealing his relationship with intersex model Michalina Manios, who was a finalist on the 2011 season of Poland’s Next Top Model.
During her appearance on the show, Manios explained that she was assigned a male identity at birth and was raised in that gender identity until she was 18 years old, something she said felt like being imprisoned. At that point, she then legally changed her gender to female.
“Functionally, I developed as a woman, but unfortunately, I was assigned a male identity, not any other,” Manios said, according to Euro News. “My body and mind developed toward femininity, but my genitals didn’t. I was ashamed to go to physical education classes because I was embarrassed.”
Intersex individuals have innate variations in physical traits that differ from typical expectations for male or female bodies, including variations in reproductive organs, hormones, or chromosome patterns. An estimated 1.7% of infants are born intersex — roughly the same number of people born with red hair.
In announcing their relationship, Szóstak said that he and Manios met online. “I liked the photos Michalina posted,” he said. “They radiated a lot of energy and femininity.” He also said they bonded over their shared Catholic faith and respect for traditions.
“Everything happened quite naturally. We became a couple,” he explained. “We have respect and understanding for each other.”
Szóstak remained in his political party during the start of their relationship. In 2019, Confederation party leader Sławomir Mentzen said, “We stand against Jews, homosexuals… taxes, and also the European Union!”
Szóstak mentioned his leaving of the party in a recent interview, saying of him and his partner, “We want to focus on what’s important,” meaning their relationship and well-being over political battles, Edge Media Network reported. He deleted his social media account after publicly discussing his relationship with Manios.
“Visibility is crucial,” said a spokesperson from Poland’s leading LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, the Campaign Against Homophobia, regarding the couple’s relationship. “When public figures share their truths, it chips away at stigma and ignorance.”
At the start of 2020, Poland’s anti-LGBTQ+ Law and Justice Party (PiS) began declaring regions across the country as “LGBT-free zones” in an attempt to remove LGBTQ+ “propaganda” from the public as a form of “Western decadence” that “threaten[s] our identity, threaten[s] our nation, threaten[s] the Polish state.” Both the U.S. and the European Union condemned the zones as violations of human rights.
By early 2020, roughly one-third of the country had established “LGBT-free zones.” However, the PiS party suffered defeat in the 2023 national elections. Then, in 2025, the party’s last of the state-sanctioned anti-LGBTQ+ zones was finally eliminated.
Burkina Faso’s Transitional Legislative Assembly passed a law on September 1, 2025, that makes consensual same-sex relations a criminal offense, a major setback for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. Under this new law, people found guilty of homosexuality could face two to five years in prison, as well as fines. The law violates LGBT people’s rights to non-discrimination and privacy.
The law is being enacted amid shrinking civic and political space and a major crackdown by the military junta on the political opposition, media, and peaceful dissent.
Until now, Burkina Faso has never had a law criminalizing consensual same-sex relations. Unlike many other African countries, it did not inherit a colonial penal code that outlawed so-called sodomy.
Passed as part of the broader Persons and Family Code, the criminalization provision was adopted unanimously by the assembly’s 71 members. It also would provide prison sentences and fines for “behavior likely to promote homosexual practices and similar practices.”
Burkina Faso’s justice and human rights minister, Edasso Rodrigue Bayala, said the new legislation responded “to the deep aspirations of our society” and showed “respect for cultural values.”
Recent judgments in other African countries like Botswana, Mauritius, and Namibia have confirmed that laws that criminalize same-sex conduct violate the privacy and non-discrimination rights of LGBT people.
Beyond violating basic rights, such laws foster violence and abuses against LGBT people. In 2014, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights strongly urged African Union member states to “end all acts of violence and abuse” targeted against persons due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Burkina Faso’s junta president, Ibrahim Traoré, should not sign the Persons and Family Code into law. Instead, he should refer it back to the assembly for revision. The revised code needs to respect the rights of non-discrimination and privacy of everyone in Burkina Faso regardless of their sexual orientation and gender identity.
In the north-east of Ukraine, a mere 18 miles from the Russian border, sits the city of Kharkiv, home to Kharkiv Pride.
Since Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the country’s second-largest city has faced relentless strikes by Russian forces with more than 8,000 of its buildings – including schools and homes – destroyed, thousands of people killed and injured whilst countless more have fled westward to Kyiv or abroad for safety.
But despite the on-going war, the destruction, the uncertainty, Pride persists.
Pride continues in Kharkiv, despite the war (Christina Pashkina)
When the conflict began, Kharkiv was quickly identified as one of Russia’s main targets given its proximity to the border, history and infrastructure.
A traditionally Russian-speaking city, Kharkiv was a major centre during the Russian Empire and once served as the capital of Soviet Ukraine between 1919 and 1934.
The city and the wider region of Kharkiv Oblast, which has become increasingly known for its agricultural production and also holds Ukraine’s largest natural gas reserves, unsurprisingly contribute significantly to Ukraine’s economy.
Capturing the Kharkiv – home to 1.4 million before the start of conflict – would be both a strategic and symbolic victory for Putin.
When Russian forces crossed the border in February they captured several towns and villages across Kharkiv Oblast as they made their way towards Kharkiv – but were unable to take the city.
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In those early days of the war, Kharkiv became a powerful symbol of Ukrainian resistance and was one of several cities declared as a Hero City of Ukraine by president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Despite Kharkiv remaining firmly in Ukrainian control the city has been continuously bombarded with shelling, with residents attempting to live their day-to-day lives amongst air sirens, blackouts and ruins.
For LGBTQ+ people living in Kharkiv, there is a further dimension to the fear residents feel at the prospect of the city falling to Putin: Russia’s deeply queerphobic national policies.
Volunteers at KharkivPride are supporting both the LGBTQ+ community and the war effort (Christina Pashkina)
“It is my biggest fear,” Anna Sharyhina, the co-organiser of KharkivPride and president of the Sphere Women`s Association, told PinkNews when asked about a list Russia allegedly has of LGBTQ+ activists, “because I know that it means sexual violence. It means physical violence. They just beat people for hours.
“We have, for instance, a colleague from the LGBT+ Military who was in captivity for 20 months. I have no idea what I should do in that case, it makes me so scared. I feel frozen when I think about that.”
In 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court said that the “international public LGBT movement” – which is not a specific organisation but rather a descriptor for LGBTQ+ activism in general – had been using “signs and manifestations” of an “extremist nature” which included what it describes as “incitement of social and religious discord”.
In 2022, after Russia invaded, KharkivPride held a MetroPride on the city’s subway (Christina Pashkina)
Sharyhina admitted she tries not to think about the threats she and others face from Russia, instead focusing her work for her community – LGBTQ+ and Ukrainian alike.
“We continue our fight and I continue that fight, even if I burn out,” she said, adding that it is not just that she does not want to be in the closet, she “can’t, anymore”.
“The only way I have is to fight. I am really tired but Ukraine, it is my home, and I really need our country to [be its own], not Russian because we are not Russian.”
“Our partners advised us to go from Kharkiv to other cities,” she said, “but we stay here and we continue our work.”
“It was important to continue our fight”
When the war came, KharkivPride, which began in 2019, was unable to go ahead with its usual activities.
Months after the invasion though, the Pride organisation instead held a MetroPride where LGBTQ+ people powerfully and resiliently marched through the city’s subway – protected from both the Russian airstrikes and the far-right groups who would normally seek to violently counter-protest.
That Pride, amidst the harrowing, early days of the conflict, was about still being in the public eye, with Sharyhina explaining “it was really important to continue our fight, continue to be visible in that situation”.
She told PinkNews initially the LGBTQ+ community chose to keep silent about its fight for equal rights when the invasion happened and focused instead on securing Ukrainian independence. But, after they were accused by certain quarters of not fighting for Ukraine, Sharyhina concluded LGBTQ+ people“can’t be silent again”.
This year’s KharkivPride celebrations are taking place between 30 August and 6 September, under the slogan: “Together for equality and victory”.
AutoPride will see a fleet of rainbow coloured cars travel through the city (Christina Pashkina)
On 30 and 31 August the group hosted a PrideFest, followed by a commemoration of fallen LGBTQ+ military personnel on 5 September and will conclude with an AutoPride on 6 September – which will see a convoy of cars decked out in rainbows travel through the city.
More than half a decade on from the first KharkivPride, when the group “collected people from zero” because the queer community was not publicly active, organisers continue to mobilise the community.
“Our community centre is a safe space for LGBT people. When people come to the community centre they feel freedom and like they can be themselves and proud of it. They don’t feel scared about coming out.
“When you have a place and know people like you – homosexual, queer or trans people – you can feel yourself,” Sharyhina said, adding LGBTQ+ residents feel “inspired” by that space.
“After that, they come to Pride because they are ready to say something about their rights.”
