The report, State-Sponsored Homophobia, was released May 17 in conjunction with the International Day Against Homophobia.

The research, conducted by Daniel Ottosson, deals only with legislation criminalizing consensual sex in private between adults.

The death penalty can be imposed for such acts in Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen, the report said.

”Although many of the (86) countries listed in the report do not systematically implement those laws, their mere existence reinforces a culture where a significant portion of the citizens needs to hide from the rest of the population out of fear — a culture where hatred and violence are justified by the state and force people into invisibility or into denying who they truly are,” said ILGA Co-Secretary General Rosanna Flamer-Caldera.

Co-Secretary General Philipp Braun added: ”In many cases, prejudice against homosexual people is the result of ignorance and fear. This (report’s) long catalogue of horrors is but a tale of the intolerance against what is foreign and different.”