Today is International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO), celebrated every May 17 to garner support for the human rights of LGBTQI persons worldwide. IDAHO was founded in 2004 by French academic Louis-Georges Tin. May 17 was chosen as the date to commemorate the World Health Organisation’s decision on that date in 1990 to remove homosexuality from the its International Classification of Diseases.

Despite WHO’s 1990 decision, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transexual, intersex, and queer people in most nations in 2012 are still being denied fundamental human rights as defined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

According to May 2012 report State-sponsored Homophobia: A world survey of laws criminalising same-sex sexual acts between consenting adults from the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA), 40 percent of member nations of the U.N. still criminalize same-sex sexual acts:

78 countries out of 193 still have legislation criminalising same-sex consensual acts between adults. Punishments range from a number of lashes (e.g. Iran), two months of prison (e.g. Algeria) to life sentence (e.g. Bangladesh) or even death (Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen). Among the 113 countries where homosexuality is legal, 55 have legislation against discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation at the work place, in 10 gays and lesbians enjoy full equal marriage rights, in 12 they can adopt children.

Click on the map below for ILGA’s full-scale map map of lesbian and gay rights in the world as of May 2012.

According to Pink News,

For the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia 2012, over 50 European politicians and leaders from EU institutions have joined forces to tell LGBT teenagers they are working to make things better.

In the video message, Members of the European Parliament tell young people it gets better in 17 languages, from Italian to Bulgarian and Swedish to Polish.

They are joined in the video by Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament;Herman van Rompuy, President of the European Council; and Cecilia Malmström, Andris Piebalgs, Neelie Kroes, László Andor and Viviane Reding, Members of the European Commission.

This video message is inspired by the American project It Gets Better, which aims to reduce self-harm and suicide attempts among LGBT young people.

Watch: