Family life

In Jordan, both marriage and adoption require the involvement of Islamic customs and Sharia courts. Therefore, same-sex couples do not have the right to marry or adopt children, and the image of families is still seen as the traditional connection between a man and a woman with one or multiple children. 

Public opinion, discrimination and access to services

Although homosexuality is not illegal under the Penal Code, societal discrimination is widespread. According to an  Arab Barometer survey from 2019, 93%  of Jordanians believe that homosexuality should not be accepted by society.  Similar polls from 2016 and 2022 show strong anti- LGBTQI+ opinions in Jordan. This negative public attitude towards the LGBTQI+-Community in Jordan leads to severe consequences. LGBTQI+ activists are forced to leave Jordan, if they continue their work for LGBTQI+ rights. The reasons for this include, among other things, the negative public attitudes, police mistreatment – such as the reported unlawful interrogations and doxxing of LGBTQI+ people starting in 2022 and 2023 based on the cybercrime laws introduced in 2023 – and fear of their family harming them due to their sexual orientation. LGBTQI+ issues are largely considered taboo by the media, but when they are discussed, they are often discussed as part of a dangerous Western agenda. 

LGBTQI+ persons have reported discrimination and disadvantages in the job and housing market following their (involuntary) outing. INTERSOS, a humanitarian aid organisation, supports people seeking employment or housing. Most cases concern LGBTQI+ persons in Amman, however, it should be noted that in areas with a more tribal social structure like the south of Jordan, it is even more difficult for LGBTQI+ people to get help. As a consequence of the lack of anti-discrimination laws, LGBTQI+ people are unable to seek legal protection from such discrimination. 

Concerningly, HIV and AIDS are widely believed to be diseases predominantly or exclusively concerning members of the LGBTQI+ community, resulting in additional social exclusion. Jordan deports foreign nationals found to be HIV-positive, and LGBTQI+ persons living with HIV have reported facing stigma and discrimination by medical professionals and employers, without any legal recourse. 

Some LGBTQI+ individuals reported reluctance to engage the legal system due to fear their sexual orientation or gender identity would either provoke hostile reactions from police or disadvantage them in court.  

Violence and abuse against the LGBTQI+ community

Violence against and honour killings of LGBTQI+ people continue to be a reality in the region according to a 2023 report of Human Rights Watch, demonstrating the incapacity and unwillingness of governments in the region to protect its LGBTQI+ citizens. According to a report of the Amman Center for Human Rights Studies, the practice of honour killings is deeply anchored into the society. The killings are mostly related to religious beliefs and disproportionately affect women and LGBTQI+ members for bringing “shame” on their families.

Additionally, members of the LGBTQI+ community, and in particular trans people, reported psychological and physical violence and a lack of support from the authorities. Out of self-protection, many thus hide their LGBTQI+ identity. 

Jordanian authorities are also accused by LGBTQI+ persons of relying on the violence of family members or the social environment as proxies to attack LGBTQI+ individuals after forcibly outing them. Persons outed by authorities are usually identified through the use of the 2023 cybercrime laws.

Government attitudes

Jordanian officials and authorities, including intelligence services, have been accused of frequently prosecuting, harassing, intimidating and outing members of the LGBTQI+ community to their families on numerous occasions in the past, often based on vague legal provisions using terms such as ‘immorality’ or ‘societal peace’. 

In 2014, Jordanian authorities arrested 10 “gays and lesbians” for holding a get-together in a reception hall in East Amman. The administrative governor of the area ordered the arrests in order to prevent a “disturbance of the peace.” That same year, an anonymous individual posted 100 pictures of Jordanian men from Grindr and Scruff, two LGBTQI+ dating apps, in a bid to expose their sexualities. The pictures were never removed, and led to the perpetration of acts of violence and ostracism toward the men who were outed. Though another major incident like this has not been reported since, authorities sometimes create fake profiles on Grindr to impersonate LGBTQI+ people and entrap them on such dating applications. 

In 2015, the situation for LGBTQI+ persons became extremely tense when a group of about 40 people attended an event hosted by LGBTQI+ activists to mark the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. Then-US ambassador Alice Wells attended, provoking harsh responses from Jordanian officials when the event was made public a few days later. The Islamic Action Front, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, issued a statement calling the meeting a form of “corruption and deviation” that threatened the security and stability of Jordan. Op-eds were published declaring the meeting a US and Zionist attempt to sabotage Arab and Islamic culture, and suggesting that gay people should be subject to hormone therapy. One Jordanian lawyer even tried to sue Wells for attending the meeting because of its unlicensed nature. After this incident, there was an uptick in violence toward the LGBTQI+ community in Jordan, some of which was documented in YouTube videos. 

Negative attention has also been drawn to members of the LGBTQI+ community in Jordan by elected officials. During the summer of 2017, a Jordanian Member of Parliament (MP) directed the Jordanian Media Commission to open an inquiry into the legality of My.Kali, a Jordanian webzine that is inclusive of LGBTQI+ topics. The website, though already blocked by the Jordanian Media Commission since 2007, was publicly declared blocked again, leading to growing online and offline tensions between the MP, who told a Western reporter that LGBTQI+ persons and Jordanian LGBTQI+ activists were not welcome in Jordan. Tensions ended up culminating in threats to members of the LGBTQI+ community in Jordan. 

In the political frenzy that was provoked by the acts of the MP, the ministers of justice and interior wrote separate official letters declaring their intolerance of LGBTQI+ people and clarifying that the government would not defend the rights of LGBTQI+ Jordanians. According to the letter from the Minister of Interior, “Jordan has not and will never endorse any charter or protocol acknowledging homosexuals, known as the LGBTQI+ community, or grant them any rights as it is considered a deviation from Islamic Law and the Jordanian Constitution.” He continued by saying that the government would never allow LGBTQI+ organisations to meet, and would seek to prosecute anyone who sought to do so. Similarly, the minister of justice declared that “Jordan has not endorsed any international agreement, protocol or pact granting rights to those who are called sexual deviants” because doing so would go against Islamic law.

In an article by the Guardian from 2023, Jordan’s secret police was accused of monitoring and abducting LGBTQI+ individuals and activists, outing them or threatening to expose them to their families and the public. Similarly, based on interviews with several activists in Jordan, Human Rights Watch reports that the Jordanian authorities launched coordinated attacks both online and offline against the LGBTQI+ community in Jordan to ban LGBTQI+ life from the Jordanian society. 

Based on the cybercrime law from 2023, Jordanian authorities allegedly aim to  suppress and censor digital LGBTQI+ content and activities from the internet and limit LGBTQI+ expression on social media. LGBTQI+ organisations and events likewise stated that they have been ordered to close and that their funding was stopped with no clear legal justification.  LGBTQI+ individuals report that as a consequence, they feel unsafe to express their sexual orientation or have fled the country out of fear of prosecution and further attacks. 

LGBTI+ support groups

There is no visible nationwide LGBTQI+ community in Jordan, with only a largely private community existing in the capital, Amman. Likewise, there are a few LGBTQI+ civil rights organisations of note in Jordan. Of those support groups which do exist, like Rainbow Street – an organisation that provides protection and support for asylum applications by at-risk individuals in the Middle East and North Africa – some state they were forced to recently close their operations in Jordan due to the increased pressure. 

Enforcement

1. In 2014, Jordanian security forces detained ten individuals from the queer community for organising a social event at a reception hall in East Amman. The regional administrative governor authorised the arrests as a precautionary measure, citing concerns over potential disturbances to public order.     
2. Between October 2022 and June 2023, transgender and queer individuals in Jordan faced increasing levels of harassment by authorities. Reported incidents included interrogations, the freezing of bank accounts, demands for the surrender of confidential records, administrative detentions, targeted surveillance and harassment of specific activists, forced closures of venues associated with LGBTQI+ communities, ongoing intimidation, and raids on social gatherings. Individuals perceived to display ‘gay’ characteristics were also reportedly detained.
3. In August 2023, the Jordanian organisation Rainbow Street (which no longer exists as of early 2026) and an unnamed LGBTQI+ centre were forced to cease all operations due to mounting pressure from Jordanian authorities following the enactment of the Cybercrime Law. According to the former director of Rainbow Road, he was forcibly detained and interrogated by authorities, who allegedly used threats of violence and the prospect of criminal prosecution to compel him to shut down all activities.

• Essa v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), 2011 FC 1493, Canada: Federal Court, 20 December 2011
  The case is an application for judicial review of the decision rendered by the Refugee Protection Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board in Canada, which refused the applicant’s refugee claim. The applicant is a twenty-five-year-old citizen of Jordan, seeking protection in Canada as he fears persecution as a gay man. The Board found that the applicant had not been truthful in his past immigration proceedings, questioned the credibility of the applicant’s testimony and pointed out numerous contradictions and inconsistencies in his refugee claim. The Court found that the comments made by the Board are based on stereotypes and thus unreasonable. Moreover, the Court held that the Board had erred in ignoring relevant evidence provided by witnesses corroborating the applicant’s testimony and also when it based its conclusions on the applicant’s credibility without regard to the testimony provided by the applicant’s witness and expert witness. Therefore, the application for judicial review is granted.
• Safadi v. Gonzales (United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, 9 August 2005)
  This is a petition for judicial review of the decision rendered by the Immigration Court, which refused the applicant’s refugee claim. The Immigration Court found that the Jordanian applicant lacks credibility as a gay man, as he initially obtained legal status in the U.S. based on a “sham” marriage to a woman (which later ended in divorce). The Appeals Court found that the combination of the fraudulent marriage with discrepancies in witness testimonies supports the adverse credibility findings of the Immigration Court. The petition for judicial review of the immigration court’s decision was denied.