Human Rights Body Calls for Repeal of Jamaica’s Anti-LGBT Laws

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights today made public a decision calling on Jamaica to repeal laws prohibiting consensual same-sex conduct.

Jamaica country map
  • Barbados
    On August 1, anglophone Caribbean nations commemorate Emancipation Day, marking the 1834 abolition of slavery in the British Empire and the 1838 abolition of apprenticeship, a system that forced formerly enslaved people to continue to work uncompensated for their former masters. Emancipation was not a gift. The Slavery Abolition Act, which banned slavery in the British colonies, followed a shift in the British Empire’s economic interests and sustained resistance by enslaved people through massive slave revolts, like Bussa’s Rebellion in Barbados, and guerilla warfare, as in the case of Jamaica’s Maroons. While resistance helped pave the way for emancipation in the 1800s, the Caribbean was not free from British colonial rule for another century. For centuries, Caribbean people fought for liberation from slavery and colonisation. Today, amid new calls for the United Kingdom (UK) to tackle systemic racism and reckon with the crimes of the British Empire, Caribbean people are still fighting for justice and repair.
    Emancipation Day – A Reminder That Caribbean Still Needs Justice, Repair
  • LGBT Rights
    Jamaica LGBT
    Redefining Rape in Jamaica
  • Health
    A woman walks away from her apartment as health workers fumigates the Altos del Cerro neighborhood as part of preventive measures against the Zika virus and other mosquito-borne diseases in Soyapango, El Salvador January 21, 2016.
    Dispatches: Zika Warnings Versus Realities Women Face

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