Colombia scores 71 on the Equaldex Equality Index, fifth of the twelve countries measured in South America. Split it and you get the most useful fact about the country on this value: a Legal Index of 92 against a Public Opinion Index of 50. Equaldex publishes that 42-point gap as a finding in its own right — Colombia is the third-largest case in the region of law running ahead of public attitudes, behind Bolivia and Ecuador.*

The legal side is close to complete, and most of it was won in court rather than in Congress. Same-sex marriage has been legal since 2016 and joint adoption since 2015. Non-binary gender has been legally recognised since 2022. Employment and housing discrimination are prohibited on both sexual orientation and gender identity, and Colombia is one of the few countries anywhere with a full ban on medically unnecessary surgery on intersex infants.*

Two gaps in that framework matter more than their size suggests. Hate crime protections cover sexual orientation but not gender identity, and conversion therapy is not banned.* The first of those is the one to hold onto, because the group least protected by the statute book is also the group facing the most violence. Caribe Afirmativo, which has documented this from the Caribbean coast since 2009, publishes an annual count of killings, threats, digital violence and discrimination by the state against LGBTIQ+ people. Its 2025 edition is titled A system that fails, and impunity is the argument: threats, it says, do not only precede violence but produce it. One figure from that report is worth carrying: between 2021 and 2025, one in six killings of LGBTIQ+ people in Colombia happened in Antioquia — the department Medellín is in.*

The EIU puts Colombia at 6.35 for 2024 — 60th of 167, a "flawed democracy", down five rank places. The internal spread is one of the widest on this site. Electoral process scores 9.17 and civil liberties 7.65; political culture scores 3.13 and functioning of government 5.71. Colombia runs elections that work and hands power over when it loses them, on top of a political culture the index rates among the weakest in the region.

The 2026 transition is a live demonstration of both halves. The outgoing president initially refused to accept the result and alleged manipulated tallies; international observers and the electoral authorities dismissed the claim, and the handover happened on schedule.*

Press freedom is where to watch next, and Colombia has an unusually good instrument for watching it. The Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP) has tracked attacks on journalists since 1996 and publishes a live map of them by department. In September 2026 it analysed the new government's Presidential Directive 01, which sets out how officials may deal with the media, and flagged limits on contact between public servants and journalists as the part worth watching.* Reporters Without Borders, measuring the year before, ranks Colombia 102nd of 180 and counts it among the region's improvers.*

Our two sources are 2.6 points apart here, the widest gap on this page, and the reason is not gender law. The World Bank's legal frameworks score is 81.05, with full marks on mobility, marriage, parenthood, childcare and property. The Georgetown WPS Index, which measures lived conditions, puts Colombia at 0.551 — 149th of 177. Inside that index, absence of legal discrimination scores 84.4. What drags it down is proximity to conflict at 93.2% and community safety at 42%: fewer than half of Colombian women say they feel safe walking alone at night where they live.

Reproductive rights run the other way from most of the countries on this site, and they are worth stating plainly because the headline score hides them. On 21 February 2022 the Constitutional Court decriminalised abortion up to 24 weeks in a 5–4 ruling, making Colombia the first country in Latin America and the Caribbean to legalise it that far into a pregnancy; after 24 weeks the existing grounds — rape or incest, fetal non-viability, and risk to health including mental health — continue to apply.* Neither of our two sources measures this, which is why it is a separate line rather than part of the number.

This is the lowest of the five and the factor breakdown is more useful than the total. The World Justice Project puts Colombia at 0.47 for 2025 — 95th of 143, down 1.8%. Within that: open government ranks 37th of 143, and second of the 41 upper-middle-income countries. Order and security ranks 134th of 143, and 41st of 41 — last in its income group. Criminal justice is 120th and absence of corruption 100th.*

A country that is unusually transparent about itself and close to the bottom of the world on physical security is a strange combination, and it is the single most accurate summary of what Colombia is like to be in. The state publishes, discloses and permits; it does not reliably control territory. The decline is documented rather than inferred: WJP names Colombia among the countries where freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of assembly and association, civic participation, judicial independence and civil justice all fell in 2025.*

This is Colombia's strongest value and one of the strongest scores in the region. The US Department of Labor assessed Colombia as making Significant Advancement in 2024 — the top of its four tiers, awarded to nine countries out of the 131 assessed, and Colombia's twelfth.* The number is our approximation of that tier rather than a published score, which is why it carries a tilde. Twelve consecutive top assessments is a real institutional record, and it is the clearest case on this page of a Colombian state doing something well and consistently.

It is also worth being clear about why that effort is needed, because the two facts belong together. The department records recruitment of children by non-state armed groups as a categorical worst form of child labour in Colombia, and commercial sexual exploitation alongside it. The tier measures what the government does about the problem; it does not measure the size of the problem.

One part of this connects directly to travel, and it is specific enough to act on. Colombia has written the tourism industry into its child-protection law: Law 679 of 2001, strengthened by Law 1336 of 2009, places explicit obligations on hotels, tour operators and transport companies to prevent the sexual exploitation of children.* That means a hotel or operator in Cartagena is not making a voluntary gesture when it displays a child-protection code; it is meeting a legal duty, and you can ask about it.