Outcome Report >> Jamaica, Comment, 36th Session, May 2020

United Nations Watch (video statement) focused on two particular areas: ... and LGBT rights. First, it commended the tremendous progress made on reducing extrajudicial killings since the establishment in 2010 of INDECOM, the Independent Commission of Investigations. It indicated that Jamaica had about 100 people killed per year and 16 people were killed so far in 2021, stressing that progress had not been enough. It also highlighted that countless families, and in particular women, faced a long struggle for justice against a de facto culture of impunity. ... It also raised the deteriorating human rights situation for Jamaica’s LGBT citizens, particularly in the context of police violence. It stressed that, one week ago, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found the Jamaican Government responsible for violating multiple rights of LGBT persons and called on Jamaica to repeal its homophobic laws. It indicated that the lack of gender identity protection under the Charter of Fundamental Rights excludes these people from justice, while Section 76 of the Offences Against the Persons Act makes LGBT persecution essentially state-sanctioned. [Para 802]