In this project I investigate the way in which LGBT global rights are understood visually. Using the Data collected by the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA), a global human rights lobbing organisation, I seek to explore the following research questions:
- What legal protections and discriminations do LGBT people face globally?
- In what ways can different analysis approaches affect our understanding of human rights situations?
This is achieved using a number of data visualisations that approach and interrogate the data from numerous angles. It is through these different approaches that I reveal how different data presentations can produce differing empathetic reactions and understandings.
I wanted to look at both the legal protections, such as workplace or marriage equality, and discriminations LGBT people face. This discrimination takes the form of, what are often colonial era laws, such as the Buggary Act or Indecently Laws. Whilst these laws affect the entire population of a country, they are the ones identified by ILGA and others as used to police and criminalise Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Trans lifestyles and expressions.
It is worth noting that due to various political reasons ILGA does not have data for some countries such as North Korea and multiple African nations. These gaps should be considered when reading the visualisations. Finally, I think it is important to remember that this data is taken from their 2017 report (the latest published) and so some of the laws in each Country will have changed, for example the recent lifting of the Buggary Act in India.
## Instructions Project details: Python version 3.5
Python code
- visualising_human_rights_data.ipynb (notebook report)
Code has been run. Find outputs in notebook cells.
Data taken from these sources:
Packages used
- pandas
- matplotlib
- numpy
- seaborn
- plotly
- scipy