How does sexual orientation develop?
This week, we start in Uganda, where anti-LGBTQ laws have fueled state-led misinformation. Next, we travel to Kenya, where the aid cuts are particularly affecting women and girls in refugee camps. Finally, we stop in the US, where more queer people are at risk of suicide as Trump plans to stop mental health support.
But first, in Darfur, Sudan, women and girls continue to live in fear of sexual and physical violence. According to the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), over 650 survivors of sexual violence were treated between January and March this year.
More than half of these attacks were carried out by armed groups, MSF says. The risk is especially high for women and girls forced to walk long distances to survive. A third of the reported attacks happened while they were working in the fields or traveling.
Since the war began in April 2023, Darfur has seen a spike in human rights abuses. The RSF, a powerful militia group, and its allies have taken over much of the region. In places like the Zamzam displacement camp, more reports of rape, abductions, and disappearances are emerging.
Women’s groups say the situation has worsened since the UN peacekeepers left. Without their patrols, many communities lost the only protection they had.
And unfortunately, while the violence gets worse, the women in Darfur still have little to no support and almost no attention from the rest of the world.
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How does sexual orientation develop?
Thirty-five years ago, millions of people around the world suddenly became “healthy.” It was on that day — May 17, 1990 — that the World Health Organization (WHO) removed homosexuality from a list of human diseases.
Until then, same-sex love was considered as a kind of mental illness. Those affected were often locked up in sanatoriums or prisons and “treated” with electric shock therapy and other questionable psychotherapies.
But homosexual, bisexual and transsexual people are not — and never were — sick, said Klaus M. Beier, the director of the Institute for Sexology and Sexual Medicine at the Berlin Charité hospital.
Human sexuality is characterized by its diversity, Beier said.