SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The Jap Caribbean Supreme Court docket struck down a colonial-era legislation in St. Lucia that criminalized homosexual intercourse in a ruling Tuesday celebrated by activists within the largely conservative area.
The court docket discovered that the island’s so-called buggery and gross indecency legal guidelines had been unconstitutional.
Elevate Your Voice St. Lucia, a nonprofit group, referred to as it a “monumental step for human rights within the Jap Caribbean.”
“It comes as a beacon of hope amid latest setbacks, equivalent to disappointments in St. Vincent and the Grenadines in addition to Trinidad and Tobago, which have examined our area’s dedication to equality,” the group mentioned.
St. Lucia’s colonial-era legislation penalized homosexual intercourse with as much as 10 years in jail. Whereas the federal government didn’t implement the legislation, activists and authorized specialists say it remained a risk to the island’s LGBTQ+ group.
“The mere existence of this provision is itself a violation of human rights and underpins additional acts of discrimination,” based on Human Dignity Belief, a U.Okay.-based authorized group that helped work on the case.
In 2019, the Jap Caribbean Alliance for Variety and Equality filed 5 authorized challenges towards such legal guidelines in Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Saint Lucia.
In 2022, courts in Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Kitts and Nevis struck down these legal guidelines.
Final yr, a court docket in Dominica did the same.
“Right this moment’s ruling isn’t just a win within the courts, it additionally represents a step in the direction of justice for the various lives misplaced to violence merely for being themselves,” mentioned Kenita Placide, the alliance’s government director. “It alerts that our Caribbean can and have to be a spot the place all individuals are free and equal beneath the legislation.”
Solely 5 Caribbean nations nonetheless penalize homosexual intercourse: Jamaica, Grenada, Guyana, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago, the place an appeals court docket earlier this yr overturned a ruling that decriminalized homosexual intercourse.
Members of the LGBTQ+ group have fled these islands following violent assaults.
The UNAIDS Caribbean workplace celebrated Tuesday’s ruling, as did J’Moul Francis, international affairs minister for Antigua and Barbuda.
“Human rights within the Jap Caribbean proceed to advance because the colonial legacies of those unconstitutional provisions proceed to fall,” he wrote on X. “Nevertheless, extra nonetheless must be carried out throughout the area to make sure that progress is actual, sensible, and efficient for LGBTQ+ people.”