Enrique Anarte Lazo

Spooked by President Donald Trump's crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), some corporate sponsors have shunned Pride marches across the United States this year, and European LGBTQ+ campaigners say they are also taking a hit.

Pride organisers from Greece and Bulgaria, to Estonia and Denmark told Context they had also lost financial support, at a time when LGBTQ+ rights are increasingly under attack across the continent.

While President Donald Trump cracks down on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, Spain is implementing what it says is the world's most ambitious laws to protect LGBTQ+ people at work.

Spain's centre-left government issued a decree in October requiring companies to protect LGBTQ+ workers, after the country's parliament passed a broad "real equality" law advancing LGBTQ+ rights in 2023.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Russians say they live in fear of discrimination or worse at work, in schools and at medical centres, according to a survey released this week. 

The largest ever survey of LGBTQ+ communities was carried out by ComingOut and the Sphere Foundation, Russian rights groups supporting LGBTQ+ people in the country and abroad, and polled more than 6,400 people from Moscow to Russia's Far East. 

U.S. states are on track to introduce a record number of bills restricting LGBTQ+ rights this year, with conservatives targeting hot topics from Pride flags to bathroom bans.

First in the firing line among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans are trans rights, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

It was a hot Tuesday morning and we were sweating as we filmed a mobile clinic that set up shop in a township in the Namibian capital Windhoek to deliver HIV prevention and sexual health services to some of the city's most vulnerable people.

"Some people might not know that using flavoured condoms for sexual activity like penetration could cause yeast infection for the lady or for their partners," said Beatrix Akuake, who comes to marginalised neighbourhoods like this one on behalf of Namibia's Planned Parenthood Association.

A new spike in mpox cases in Berlin has sparked alarm among German health authorities and LGBTQ+ advocates, with local groups calling for an urgent vaccination campaign to protect gay and bisexual men most at risk from the outbreak.

The German capital registered four times more mpox cases in the first three months of 2025 than in the same period of 2023 and 2024, and unlike many of the cases reported across Europe this year, most of them are not travel-related.

U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has made access to HIV treatment for men who have sex with men and trans people uniquely difficult, despite a waiver for parts of the flagship President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR.

Both groups are among those most at risk of HIV infection and face multiple legal and social obstacles in many of the 55 countries, including Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, that benefit from PEPFAR since it was launched in 2003.

U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to slash most U.S. aid funding has plunged thousands of humanitarian programmes into uncertainty - and the millions of people who rely on the projects for food, clean water, shelter and healthcare.

In Namibia, a country of 3 million people in southern Africa, the most vulnerable people who relied on U.S.-funded HIV/AIDS services may now struggle to access vital medication and other care.

The conservative bloc won Germany's election last Sunday but its leader Friedrich Merz, set to become the next chancellor, may struggle to secure enough support from other parties to implement the LGBTQ+ rights rollbacks he promised voters.

Merz faces complex and lengthy coalition negotiations after the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) surged to a historic second place in a fractured vote after the collapse of chancellor Olaf Scholz's three-way alliance.

For many LGBTQ+ Germans, this month's elections are no longer about winning new rights; the best-case scenario now is just to hang on to any hard-won gains and ensure life doesn't get worse.

"They're talking about revoking the trans self-determination law only three months after it entered into force. It's absurd," said Jojo Ludwig, a social media creator who last year was legally recognised as non-binary - neither male nor female.