The Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court has struck down laws that made homosexuality illegal in the tiny country of St Lucia.
On Tuesday the court found that the island’s so-called buggery and gross indecency laws were unconstitutional.
Activists who have been worked to get the laws changed in the conservative nation are celebrating the win.
Raise Your Voice St. Lucia, a nonprofit organisation, called it a “monumental step for human rights in the Eastern Caribbean.”
St Lucia’s colonial era law punished people who participated in gay sex with a 10 year prison sentence. While the government had stopped enforcing the laws, they remained a threat to the island’s LGBTIQA+ community.
A 2018 Human Rights Watch report documented the harmful impact of such laws across seven Eastern Caribbean countries, including Saint Lucia. Many LGBT people in the region have reported discrimination in health care, education, and employment, along with fear of reporting abuse to police. These laws created a climate of fear and exclusion, pushing LGBT communities into the shadows.
The island nation is located in the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean and has a population of over 180,000 people.
Saint Lucia now joins Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica and St Kitts & Nevis as the fifth country in the Eastern Caribbean to decriminalise gay sex in recent times, leaving only five remaining countries in the Western Hemisphere with criminalising laws still on the books.
Five Caribbean countries – Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago – still maintain versions of these laws. Recent legal challenges to the laws in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago were not successful.
“The mere existence of this provision is itself a violation of human rights and underpins further acts of discrimination,” said the Human Dignity Trust, a U.K.-based legal organization that helped work on the case.
“This victory marks another significant legal milestone for the LGBT community in the Caribbean and demonstrates the importance of the courts when law makers fail to respect fundamental human rights. We extend our heartfelt congratulations to the litigants and activists who have tirelessly pursued justice.” Chief Executive Tea Braun said.
