Antigua and Barbuda

Antigua and Barbuda’s 1995 Sexual Offences Act criminalizes the act of “buggery” between consenting adults with a sentence of 15 years in prison, and acts of “serious indecency” with up to 5 years. Human Rights Watch has documented anti-LGBT violence and threats faced by gay men and trans women in Antigua and Barbuda.

The Royal Police Force of Antigua and Barbuda has undergone LGBTI sensitization training to better protect the rights of LGBTI people, facilitated by Caribbean activists.

In 2016, following its UN Universal Periodic Review, the minister of social transformation announced that she was willing to introduce to Cabinet a recommendation to repeal the buggery laws, but as of 2021, they remain in place in Antigua and Barbuda.

In November 2019, the Eastern Caribbean Alliance for Diversity and Equality announced it planned to launch a legal challenge against the criminalization of private, consensual same-sex sexual activity.

Argentina

In 2010, Argentina became the first Latin American country to legalize same-sex marriage at a national level. The Civil Marriage Law allows same-sex couples to enter civil marriages and affords them the same legal marital protections as different-sex couples, including adoption rights and pension benefits. Since 2010 more than 20,000 same-sex couples have married nationwide.

In 2012, Argentina passed a Gender Identity Law, respecting self-identification. It allows anyone to change the gender and name in their identity card and birth certificate through a simple administrative procedure.

In September 2020, President Alberto Fernández issued a decree establishing that at least one percent of employees in the federal government should be transgender people.

Barbados

Chapter 154 of the 1992 Sexual Offences Act punishes any person who commits “buggery” with life imprisonment, and any person who commits an “act of serious indecency” with 10 years in prison. In 2016, then-Prime Minister Freundel Stuart of Barbados claimed the Sexual Offences Act only applies in cases of non-consensual sex, but the buggery laws make no distinction between consensual and non-consensual sex, and their application is not conditioned on lack of consent. Barbados rejected Universal Periodic Review recommendations in 2018 to decriminalize same-sex acts. In 2018, three LGBT activists in Barbados filed a challenge to the buggery laws with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

In November 2019, the Eastern Caribbean Alliance for Diversity and Equality announced it planned to launch a legal challenge against the criminalization of private, consensual same-sex sexual activity.

In July 2020, Prime Minister Mia Mottley denounced discrimination on the basis of gender and sexual orientation in response to a version of the Remote Employment Act, 2020 – a bill enabling foreigners to live and work in Barbados for one year – that discriminated against same-sex couples.

In August 2020, Barbados passed the Employment (Prevention of Discrimination) Act providing protections in the workplace, including on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, and other characteristics.

Belize

In 2016 the Belize Supreme Court became the first Commonwealth Caribbean Court to hold that laws that criminalize same-sex intimacy were unconstitutional, affirming the rights of LGBT people in Belize to dignity, privacy, and equality before the law. The court struck down Section 53 of the criminal code, which outlawed “carnal intercourse against the order of nature,” and reduced the scope of Section 53 by excluding sexual activity taking place in private between consenting adults. The Court of Appeal reaffirmed the ruling in December 2019, stating unequivocally that the constitutional prohibition on sex discrimination includes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Bolivia

In 2010, Bolivia passed a law that provides legal protection against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

In 2016, the Plurinational Assembly passed a law that allows people to revise the gender listed on their identification documents without judicial approval or sex reassignment surgery, though it requires a psychological exam. In November 2017, the Constitutional Court ruled that revision of gender did not grant the right to marry a person of the same biological sex.

In December 2020, after a two-year legal battle, the national civil registry complied with a court order and registered the first same-sex union in the country. The country’s constitutional court will review the court order in 2021, a decision which may impact all same-sex couples in the country who seek to register their union.

Brazil

President Jair Bolsonaro has a long history of anti-LGBT comments as well as vocal opposition to comprehensive sexuality education on the grounds that it constitutes “early sexualization.” The president and members of his cabinet continue to peddle such rhetoric. In 2020, President Bolsonaro accused the World Health Organization of incentivizing homosexuality through its sexuality education guidelines, while the Minister of Education denounced sexuality education and attributed homosexuality in young people to “maladjusted families.”

President Bolsonaro and other public officials subscribe to the notion that children are being “indoctrinated,” including by teachers, with so-called “gender ideology,” a vacuous catch-all term intended to denote an ill-defined gay and feminist conspiracy to wreak havoc on traditional values. For example, upon taking office, Damares Alves, the Minister of Women, Family, and Human Rights, decried the “ideological indoctrination” of children and adolescents and said, in a rebuke of the notion of gender, that “girls will be princesses and boys will be princes.”

Hundreds of bills are pending or have been approved in municipal and state legislatures and in Congress that aim to ban “gender ideology” or “indoctrination.” In 2020, Brazil’s Supreme Court struck down a series of those laws. In its decisions striking down laws from Paraná and Goiás, the court ruled that municipalities cannot override national education plans and also found that the municipal bans violated the rights to equality, education, and freedom of expression. In response, in May 2020, Bolsonaro vowed to send a bill banning “gender ideology” to the National Congress, but has not yet done so.

In January 2020, the Supreme Court upheld freedom of expression and vacated a ruling by a Rio de Janeiro judge ordering Netflix to take down a special featuring a “gay Jesus.” In May, the Court revoked a ban enacted by the federal government on men who had sexual relations with other men donating blood.

Between January and June 2020, the national Human Rights Ombudspersons Office received 1,134 complaints of violence, discrimination, and other abuses against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons.

Canada

In June 2018, the Senate passed Bill C-66, which expunges the records of individuals who were prosecuted because of their sexuality when same-sex conduct was criminalized in Canada. The bill follows Prime Minister Trudeau’s 2017 apology in the House of Commons for the historic mistreatment of sexual minorities by the Canadian government. In June 2019, the parliament’s standing committee on health published a report that, among other things, recommended the government collect data on sexual orientation and gender identity, apply an intersectional approach to policymaking, and amend the criminal code to eliminate an exemption for medically unnecessary “normalizing” surgeries on intersex children.

Chile

A gender identity law took effect in December 2019. It allows transgender people over 14 years old to change their name and gender in the civil registry without undergoing surgery. Married people, however, must divorce before exercising their right to legal gender recognition.

In January 2020, the Senate voted to consider a 2017 bill to legalize same-sex marriage and allow same-sex couples to adopt children and pursue other reproductive options. In October, a Committee in the Senate approved the majority of the articles in the bill. It remained pending at time of writing.

In June 2020, the Constitutional Court denied a petition filed by a lesbian couple who were married in Spain and have a child to have their marriage recognized in Chile. The court held that that Chilean law, in its denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples, does not discriminate.

In October 2019,the Chilean LGBT organization Movilh submitted a report to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights documenting 23 cases of apparently bias-related police abuses against LGBT people amid social protests, including torture, robbery, and arbitrary arrests.

Colombia

In recent years, authorities have taken several steps to recognize the rights of LGBT people. In June 2015, the Justice Ministry issued a decree allowing people to revise the gender noted on their identification documents without prior judicial approval. In November 2015, the Constitutional Court ruled that Colombians cannot be barred from adopting a child because of their sexual orientation. In 2016, the court upheld the right of same-sex couples to marry.

Despite Colombia’s strong legal protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, the human rights ombudsperson has raised concerns about high levels of violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, on April 8, 2020 the government of Bogotá established a gender-based quarantine. The mayor called on the authorities to respect transgender people’s gender identity in implementing the quarantine, but there were reports of some cases of police abuse against transgender and non-binary people. Bogotá scrapped its gendered quarantine starting on May 11.

The government of Cartagena also implemented a gender-based quarantine on April 13, 2020 and lifted it on May 11.

Costa Rica

In 2016, Costa Rica requested that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issue an interpretation of the right to privacy and the right to equal protection under the American Convention on Human Rights in connection with LGBT rights claims. In a landmark 2017 opinion, the court stated that all rights applicable to heterosexual couples should extend to same-sex couples. Then, in 2018, the Costa Rican Constitutional Court followed that opinion and ruled in favor of marriage equality. On May 26, 2020, a lesbian couple was the first same-sex couple to marry in Costa Rica, as marriage equality became legal in the country.

Cuba

Article 42 of the Cuban Constitution prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. However, many LGBT people suffer violence and discrimination, particularly in the country’s interior. In its 2020 report on Cuba, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) noted allegations that police often refuse to investigate anti-LGBT attacks and that LGBT people have been fired or excluded from university education due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Following public protest, in 2018 the Cuban government removed language from the proposed new constitution that would have defined marriage as inclusive of same-sex couples. The government said that in March 2021, it will introduce a new version of the Family Code, which governs marriage, in the legislature for review, and then put the code to a vote in a referendum.

Like others in Cuba, LGBT people suffer abusive restrictions on freedom of speech and peaceful assembly imposed by the government. In May 2019, Cuban police arrested LGBT rights activists in an unauthorized Pride march in Havana.

Dominica

Section 16 of the 1998 Sexual Offences Act punishes same-sex conduct between two consenting adults with 10 years in prison, and Section 14 punishes any person who commits “gross indecency” with 5 years in prison. The law specifies that if a person is convicted of “buggery,” “the Court may order that the convicted person be admitted to a psychiatric hospital for treatment.”

In July 2019, a gay man filed a case in Dominica’s High Court challenging the constitutionality of the buggery law.

Ecuador

On June 13, 2019, Ecuador’s highest court ruled to recognize same-sex marriage, declaring the country’s marriage legislation discriminatory and unconstitutional and buttressing its argument with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ landmark 2017 opinion. In July 2019, the Civil Registry registered the first same-sex marriage. Since 2008, civil unions had been recognized but did not accord the full range of rights enjoyed by married couples, including the ability to adopt children.

In May 2018, Ecuador’s Constitutional Court ruled that a child born in Ecuador with two British mothers should be registered as an Ecuadorean citizen, and that the registry office should record the names of both mothers as parents. In October 2018, a family judge in Quito ruled in favor of a 9-year-old girl and her parents who were requesting a change of name and gender marker in child’s identity document to match her gender identity. The Civil Registry appealed the decision. In 2019, the child’s parents appealed to the Constitutional Court, but the court had not yet ruled on the case at the time of writing.

On August 25, 2020, the National Assembly approved a draft health code. The health bill, which President Lenin Moreno vetoed, included language prohibiting conversion therapy, echoing a criminal code prohibition that bans any attempt to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. It would have also protected intersex children by prohibiting medical procedures that violate the personal integrity of those who have not reached puberty.

El Salvador

LGBT people are targets of violence by police, gangs, and others. Between October 2019 and April 2020 alone, at least seven trans women and two gay men were murdered in El Salvador, with details in the cases suggesting the killers had been motivated by hatred based on the victims’ gender identity or sexual orientation. Official statistics released in January 2020 showed 692 cases of violence against LGBT and intersex people from January 2015 to June 2019. In May 2019, the Ombudsperson’s Office published a report documenting 19 unsolved murders of LGBT people, primarily transgender women, between 2009 and 2016.

In July 2020, three police officers were found guilty in connection with the death of Camila Díaz Córdova, a transgender woman deported from the United States. They were given 20-year prison sentences. It was a landmark case, delivering El Salvador’s first conviction for the killing of a transgender person, but the judge dismissed charges qualifying the killing as an aggravated offense under a penal code provision on hate crimes.

In June 2019, President Nayib Bukele dissolved the Secretariat of Social Inclusion, within which the Directorate on Sexual Diversity was based, and subsumed the directorate into an existing Gender Unit in the Ministry of Culture, renamed the Gender and Diversity Unit. LGBT activists criticized the move, protesting that few of their grave concerns regarding safety and discrimination could be adequately addressed under the ambit of culture.

Salvadoran law does not provide for a rights-based procedure by which transgender people can change their names and gender markers on official documents, and individuals must petition the courts to do so. In April 2019, a judge in Zacatecoluca ruled to allow a transgender woman to change her name and gender marker on her identity document.

Grenada

Article 430 of Grenada’s Criminal Code of 1987 defines “any grossly indecent act” as a misdemeanor. Article 431 punishes “unnatural connexion” with a sentence of 10 years, a provision that has been interpreted in at least three cases to include consensual anal intercourse between same-sex persons.

In 2016, Grenadians voted down a referendum instituting protections from discrimination based on gender, in part due to fears that the referendum would open a legal path to same-sex marriage.

In November 2019, the Eastern Caribbean Alliance for Diversity and Equality announced it planned to launch a legal challenge against the criminalization of private, consensual same-sex sexual activity.

Guatemala

During the first four weeks of 2021, at least five gay and transgender people were reportedly killed in Guatemala. The spate of killings was, sadly, not out of the ordinary: in 2020, human rights ombudsperson Jordán Rodas said at least 19 people known to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) were murdered in Guatemala. He called on the Attorney General’s office to establish a special unit to investigate anti-LGBT hate crimes.

Guatemala has no comprehensive civil legislation protecting people from discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. Employers, landlords, health care facilities, schools, and other public and private institutions face no penalty for discriminating. No law allows transgender people to change their name or gender marker on official documents.

The Life and Family Protection bill remains under consideration by Congress. The bill contains provisions that discriminate against LGBT people. It defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman and establishes that “freedom of conscience and expression” protects people from being “obliged to accept non-heterosexual conduct or practices as normal.” President Alejandro Giammattei has publicly supported this bill.

In June 2020, several lawmakers attempted to remove the ombudsperson from office for using a rainbow flag on social media to commemorate Pride month, and for releasing videos calling on the government to fulfill its international obligation to prevent anti-LGBT violence and discrimination.

Guyana

Guyana criminalizes “acts of gross indecency” between men with two years in prison (article 352). The criminal code sentences any person convicted of “buggery” to life in prison (article 354). In November 2018, the Caribbean Court of Justice struck down a law that criminalized cross-dressing in public “for an immoral purpose,” stating that the law violated transgender people’s rights to equality and non-discrimination.

Haiti

LGBT people suffer high levels of discrimination in Haiti. No comprehensive civil law protects against discrimination. A new penal code, issued in 2020, prescribes criminal penalties for discrimination, including when motivated by sexual orientation. The new penal code also makes any crime motivated by its target’s real or perceived sexual orientation an aggravated offense and punishes with up to life imprisonment any murder motivated by a victim’s sexual orientation.

Two anti-LGBT bills passed by the Senate in 2017 remain under consideration by the Chamber of Deputies. One adds homosexuality as a reason for denying a Certificat de Bonne Vie et Mœurs, a certificate of good standing required by many employers and universities as proof that a person has not committed a felony. The other bans same-sex marriage, establishing prison sentences of up to three years and a fine of about US$8,000 for “parties, co-parties and accomplices” to a same-sex marriage. It also bans any public support or advocacy for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights.

In November 2019, Charlot Jeudy, a gay man who founded Haiti’s LGBTQ advocacy group Kouraj, was found dead at his home. As of February 2021, circumstances surrounding his death and the results of an autopsy remain publicly unknown.

Honduras

LGBT people in Honduras are frequently the targets of violence and discrimination. They face violence from gangs, the national civil police and the military police, members of the public, and their own families, as well as extortion by gangs and discrimination in schools and in the workplace.

Violence against LGBT individuals forces many to leave their homes, fleeing internally or leaving the country to seek asylum. Although a law provides higher penalties for bias-based crimes, including on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity, the Attorney General’s office told Human Rights Watch in September 2020 that no one has been convicted under the law.

In November 2020, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights heard the case of Vicky Hernández, a trans woman allegedly extrajudicially executed in 2009. In December 2018, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights had found Honduras responsible for failing to investigate Hernández’s death. It submitted the case to the court in April 2019 due to Honduras’ lack of compliance with its recommendations, such as introducing comprehensive policies to map and prevent anti-LGBT violence and designing training programs on anti-LGBT violence for state security bodies.

Honduras bans same-sex marriage. The 2005 constitutional amendment prohibits recognizing marriage between people of the same sex, including same-sex marriages contracted in other countries. Honduras also bans adoption by same-sex couples.

In January 2021, Congress passed a constitutional amendment that increases the number of votes needed in Congress to amend the article of the constitution that prohibits same-sex marriage. It increases the votes needed from the current two-thirds majority of the legislature to three-quarters, making future reform of these provisions extremely difficult.

Jamaica

Sections 76, 77, and 79 of Jamaica’s Offences Against the Person Act (1864) criminalize both consensual and non-consensual sex between men and punish same-sex conduct with a sentence of up to 10 years in prison or hard labor. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued decisions in two cases calling on Jamaica to repeal these laws. The decisions, issued December 31, 2020 and made public in February 2021, found that Jamaica’s laws violate rights to privacy, health, and equal protection under the American Convention on Human Rights. They also found that discriminatory legislation contributes to violence by members of the public. The commission called on Jamaica to gather data on violence and discrimination against LGBT and intersex people, train public officials on addressing such cases, and provide comprehensive sexuality education that is inclusive of sexual and gender diversity. Human Rights Watch reports show that the “buggery” laws contribute to a hostile climate in which discrimination and violence are rife.

In the past, politicians have argued that the absence of a gender-neutral rape law justifies retaining the buggery laws. Jamaica’s Sexual Offences Act (2009) currently defines rape as the penetration of the vagina with the penis without consent, a narrow definition that fails to protect male victims of rape and female victims of non-vaginal rape.

Mexico

Mexico City and 19 additional Mexican states have legalized same-sex marriage. In the other 12 states, same-sex couples must file an amparo (constitutional challenge) to be allowed to marry based on a 2015 Supreme Court decision that limiting marriage to different-sex couples violates the constitution. The process of obtaining an amparo can cost up to US$600 (the average monthly household income in Mexico was US$800 in 2019). In September 2018, a same-sex couple in Michoacán was able to obtain a birth certificate for their child on which the two mothers were listed as the parents.

In 2016, former president Enrique Peña Nieto instructed the Secretariat of Education to include the topic of sexual diversity in its new educational materials. The Secretariat complied in 2018. Peña Nieto’s successor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has reiterated a commitment to sexuality education. A 2019 educational decree further recognizes the need for sexuality education that includes a gender perspective.

In October 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a transgender applicant who sought to change their gender marker through administrative means at the Civil Registry in Veracruz. In May 2019, the Supreme Court also ordered the state of Jalisco to grant a new birth certificate to a resident there to reflect the fact the person changed their sex and name. Fourteen states allow transgender people to change their names and gender markers on birth certificates through a simple administrative process before the state Civil Registry.

Panama

Panama has no comprehensive civil legislation protecting people from discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity.

In October 2016, a Panamanian-British couple filed the first petition for the country’s Supreme Court to declare unconstitutional part of article 26 of Panama’s Family Code defining marriage as “between a man and a woman.” Since 2016, three more same-sex couples have mounted legal challenges to article 26, as well as against article 34 of the Family Code and article 35 of Law No. 61 (2015), which further define marriage as between different-sex couples. The cases all remain pending before different courts: the plenary of the Supreme Court, the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court (dealing with administrative cases), and the Electoral Tribunal.

In November 2019, following widespread protests, President Laurentino Cortizo recommended that many proposed controversial constitutional amendments, including one banning marriage equality, be scrapped. The National Assembly is scheduled to revisit the proposed constitution in 2021.

Starting in April 2020, transgender people experienced discrimination by police and private security guards enforcing Panama’s gender-based Covid-19 quarantine. In May 2020 the Ministry of Public Security called on police to implement the directive without discrimination against LGBT people. In July 2020, five government ministries and the Ombudsperson’s Office made a statement acknowledging the reports of discrimination against transgender people specifically. The statement also denounced transphobia, affirmed that Panama respects “the diversity of identity and expression,” and called upon public and private entities to stop discrimination.

The gender-based measures were repealed in all parts of Panama in September 2020, but were reinstated in December 2020 and continued in place in parts of the country through mid-February 2021.

Peru

Same-sex couples in Peru are not allowed to marry or enter into civil unions. Bills to recognize these rights are pending in Congress. In November 2020, the Constitutional Tribunal denied recognition to a same sex-marriage contracted abroad.

In August 2020, the Ministry of Justice created a special procedure allowing same-sex partners of public health workers to access state benefits in the event of Covid-19-related deaths.

People in Peru must appear before a judge in order to revise the gender markers on their identification documents. A bill introduced in 2016 allowing people to change their gender markers without prior judicial approval remained pending in Congress at time of writing. In August 2020, a court ordered the civil registry to allow transgender Peruvians to change their name and sexual identification on national identity documents through an administrative process. The registry’s appeal of the ruling remained pending at time of writing.

In April 2020, Peru announced a gender-based quarantine in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. There were reports of cases of discrimination against transgender people by the police and the military, despite orders given by the President of Peru and the Minister of the Interior to respect gender identity. The government reversed the measure shortly over a week after passing it, noting that most shopping was happening only on women’s days.

In April 2020, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found Peru responsible for the arbitrary detention and rape by police of a transgender woman in a landmark case, ruling for the first time on a complaint of torture related to gender identity or sexual orientation.

St. Kitts and Nevis

St. Kitts and Nevis’ Offences Against the Person Act punishes the “abominable crime of buggery” with a sentence of up 10 years in prison or hard labor. The act also punishes “whosoever shall attempt to commit the said abominable crime” with up to four years in prison.

In November 2019, the Eastern Caribbean Alliance for Diversity and Equality announced it planned to launch a legal challenge against the criminalization of private, consensual same-sex sexual activity.

St. Lucia

According to the 2004 Criminal Code of St. Lucia, any act of “gross indecency” committed by people of the same sex is punishable by 10 years in prison. Under the same code, a person who commits “buggery” with the consent of another person can be sentenced to 10 years in prison.

In 2013, the Royal St. Lucia Police Force underwent sensitivity training in order to better process hate crimes against LGBT persons.

In November 2019, the Eastern Caribbean Alliance for Diversity and Equality announced it planned to launch a legal challenge against the criminalization of private, consensual same-sex sexual activity.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines

In the 1990 Criminal Code of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Section 146 punishes “buggery” with 10 years in prison, and Section 148 punishes an “act of gross indecency with another person of the same sex” with five years in prison.

In July 2019, two gay men filed a case challenging the criminalization of private, consensual same-sex sexual activity.

Trinidad and Tobago

In April 2018, the High Court ruled sections 13 and 16 of the Sexual Offences Act that criminalize “buggery” and “serious indecency” unconstitutional on grounds that they violated fundamental rights including privacy and family life. The court also found that the laws were not protected from challenge by the savings clause in the constitution.

Venezuela

Venezuela has no comprehensive civil legislation protecting people from discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity, though it provides limited protection in certain areas. For example, the Labor Code prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, while a housing law prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in this sector. No legal instrument protects people based on their gender identity or gender expression. There is no regulation on the change of sex or legal name in the country, and these processes are de facto prohibited.

Article 77 of the Constitution refers to “protection” of marriage between a man and a woman. It does not mention same-sex couples, therefore not explicitly prohibiting their unions, but same-sex marriages have not been recognized.