Outcome Report >> Kiribati, Comment, 35th Session, February 2020

The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (by video message) ...praised Kiribati’s efforts to eliminate discriminatory societal stereotypes against women. It, however, underlined that Kiribati noted the recommendation calling for broadening the constitutional definition of discrimination, which excluded sexual orientation or gender identity as prohibited grounds. It urged Kiribati to intensify efforts to remove structural barriers to the right of women to transmit their nationality to their children and foreign spouses; to ensure the equal rights of women to landownership, inheritance and the exercise of agency through access to sexual and reproductive services, including decriminalization of abortion; to take proactive measures to create community awareness about the remedies available to victims and survivors of domestic and gender-based violence; to decriminalize consensual same-sex relations between adults; as well as to amend the Penal Code to criminalize human trafficking in line with international standards. [Para 788]