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Trinidad and Tobago has become the latest Caribbean nation to strike down laws criminalising same-sex intimacy after its highest court of appeal ruled they violated fundamental human rights.
The decision by the London-based Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ends one activist’s “historic 10-year legal battle”, said The Guardian, to scrap the “colonial era laws” that still apply in more than 30 Commonwealth countries.
Violated constitutional rights
“It is now official,” said the Trinidad Daily Express. “Consensual sex between adults of the same sex in private is no longer a criminal offence in Trinidad and Tobago.”
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The Privy Council ruling also made clear that adults in same-sex or heterosexual relationships “can no longer be prosecuted under Section 13 of the Sexual Offences Act for consensual anal intercourse in private”.
Trinidad-born LGBTQ+ activist Jason Jones has been fighting the “buggery law”, introduced in 1925 under British colonial rule, since 2016, “arguing that it violated his constitutional rights”, said The Guardian.
Jones had won a landmark legal victory in 2018 when Trinidad’s High Court ruled that the “provisions criminalising consensual anal sex were unconstitutional”. But the islands’ government appealed and last year won a ruling that reversed that decision and “recriminalised consensual anal sex”.
The Privy Council, the highest court of appeal for many Commonwealth countries, has now overturned that judgment. In a unanimous verdict, the Privy Council ruled the colonial-era laws “infringed” Jones’ “fundamental rights”.
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Issues unresolved
Jones, who lives in London, “welcomed the decision but said broader issues of human rights and equality for LGBTQ+ people remain unresolved across the Commonwealth and other jurisdictions where colonial-era laws continue to exist”, said Caribbean National Weekly.
Similar laws have been repealed in British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean such as Anguilla and Montserrat, and overturned in countries including St Lucia, Barbados and Dominica.
But some nations in the region retain legislation criminalising “consensual same-sex relations between men”, said Attitude, including Grenada, Jamaica, and St Vincent and the Grenadines.
After the ruling, Jones said: “We may not see the benefits of this for 50 years. What a judgment says in a courtroom and what happens in your home and workplace are two entirely different things.”
Rebekah Evans is senior editor at The Week. She joined as newsletter editor in 2023 and has written on subjects ranging from conflict and Caribbean politics to fast fashion and football. She started her career at Reach plc, where she cut her teeth on news, before pivoting into personal finance at the height of the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis. Social affairs is another of her passions, and she has interviewed people from across the world and from all walks of life. Rebekah completed an NCTJ with the Press Association and has written for publications including The Guardian, The Week magazine, the Press Association and local newspapers.
