Civil Society Scores LGBTQI+ Rights Victory in Dominica — Global Issues

Opinion by Ines M Pousadela (montevideo, uruguay)Monday, Could 06, 2024Inter Press Service

Comparable choices had been made in Antigua and Barbuda, St Kitts and Nevis and Barbados in 2022 – however progress then threatened to stall. Change in Dominica revives the hopes of LGBTQI+ activists within the 5 remaining English-speaking Caribbean states – Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines – that also criminalise same-sex relations. Ahead of later, certainly one of can be subsequent. A small island has made a giant distinction.

Winds of change

The criminalisation of consensual homosexual intercourse within the Anglophone Caribbean dates again to the British colonial period. All former British colonies within the area inherited an identical prison legal guidelines in opposition to homosexuality concentrating on both LGBTQI+ individuals basically or homosexual males particularly. They sometimes retained them after independence and thru subsequent prison regulation reforms.

That’s what occurred in Dominica, which turned unbiased in 1978. Its 1998 Sexual Offences Act retained prison provisions relationship again to the 1860s. Part 16 of that regulation made intercourse between grownup males, described as ‘buggery’, punishable with as much as 10 years’ imprisonment and attainable obligatory psychiatric confinement.

The offence listed in part 14, ‘gross indecency’, was initially punishable by as much as 5 years in jail if dedicated by two same-sex adults. A 2016 modification elevated the penalty to 12 years.

As in different Caribbean international locations with comparable provisions, prosecutions for these crimes have been uncommon in latest a long time, and have by no means resulted in a conviction. However they’ve been efficient in stigmatising LGBTQI+ individuals, legitimising social prejudice and hate speech, enabling violence, together with by police, obstructing entry to important social companies, significantly healthcare, and denying individuals the complete safety of the regulation.

Change has begun solely up to now decade, nevertheless it’s been speedy. Bans on same-sex relations had been overturned by the courts in Belize in 2016 and Trinidad and Tobago in 2018. Extra quickly adopted.

The authorized case

In July 2019, an unnamed homosexual man recognized as ‘BG’ filed a authorized case difficult sections 14 and 16 of the Sexual Offences Act. The defendants named within the criticism had been the Lawyer Common, the Bishop of Dominica’s capital Roseau, the Anglican Church and the Methodist Church. The Dominica Affiliation of Evangelical Church buildings was additionally listed as an occasion.

The lawsuit was supported by Minority Rights Dominica (MiRiDom), the nation’s predominant LGBTQI+ advocacy group, and three worldwide allies: the Canadian HIV/AIDS Authorized Community, the College of Toronto’s Worldwide Human Rights Program and Attorneys With out Borders. The regulation was challenged as discriminatory and an enabler of violence in opposition to LGBTQI+ individuals.

The Excessive Court docket heard the case in September 2022, and on 22 April 2024, Justice Kimberly Cenac-Phulgence issued a ruling setting out the the explanation why sections 14 and 16 violated the applicant’s constitutional rights to liberty, freedom of expression and privateness, and had been subsequently null and void.

The backlash

LGBTQI+ advocates around the globe welcomed the court docket ruling, as did UNAIDS – the United Nations company main the worldwide effort to finish HIV/AIDS. However resistance wasn’t lengthy in coming.

Spiritual establishments, which maintain numerous affect in Dominica, had been fast to decry positive factors in LGBTQI+ rights as losses in ethical values. The day after the ruling was introduced, Dominica’s Catholic Church printed an announcement reaffirming its place that intercourse ought to solely happen inside a heterosexual marriage and, whereas expressing compassion in direction of LGBTQI+ individuals, reiterated its perception within the centrality of conventional marriage and household. The Seventh-day Adventists expressed alarm in regards to the potential of the court docket ruling to result in same-sex unions and marriages. Some religion leaders voiced outright bigoty, with one outstanding determine calling sexual acts between individuals of the identical intercourse an ‘abomination’.

The highway forward

Having decriminalised same-sex relations, Dominica is now ranked 116th out of 198 international locations on Equaldex’s Equality Index, which charges international locations in line with their LGBTQI+ friendliness. There’s clearly a lot work to be performed. Excellent points embody safety in opposition to discrimination in employment and housing, marriage equality and adoption rights. LGBTQI+ activists may even proceed to push for the popularity of non-binary genders, the legalisation of gender change and the prohibition of conversion remedy.

The Equality Index makes clear that, as in all of the Caribbean international locations which have not too long ago decriminalised same-sex relations, modifications to legal guidelines stay far forward of social attitudes, with appreciable public homophobia. As the moment conservative reactions to the court docket ruling counsel, altering legal guidelines and insurance policies isn’t practically sufficient. Shifting social attitudes should now be a prime precedence.

Dominican LGBTQI+ activists know this, which is why they’ve been working to problem prejudice and foster understanding since lengthy earlier than launching their authorized problem – and why they see the court docket victory as not the top of a journey however a stepping stone to additional change.

The problem for Dominica’s LGBTQI+ civil society is to exchange the vicious circle of authorized prohibition, which has strengthened social stigma, with a virtuous one wherein authorized progress normalises the presence and social acceptance of LGBTQI+ individuals, which in flip permits efficient entry to legally enshrined rights.

However they’ll take coronary heart from being a part of a broader regional and international development. Whereas working to make sure rights are realised domestically, they’ll additionally supply a robust instance that change may end up to the circa 64 international locations around the globe that also criminalise homosexual intercourse, together with the 5 holdouts within the Commonwealth Caribbean. Extra progress will come.

Inés M. Pousadela CIVICUS Senior Analysis Specialist, co-director and author for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal supply: Inter Press Service

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