Trinidad and Tobago Stakeholder Report for the United Nations Universal Periodic Review: LGBTIQ+ Rights
Country: Trinidad and Tobago
Partners: Jason Jones People's Foundation, Khaleem Ali
Issues: LGBTIQ+ Rights
Mechanism: UN Universal Periodic Review
Report Type: Stakeholder Report
The criminalization of consensual same-sex sexual activity between adult men in Trinidad and Tobago leaves all men who have sex with men – regardless of whether they self-identify as gay, bisexual, queer or another sexual minority – at serious risk of harm and systematic exclusion. Additionally, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer, and other gender or sexual minority (LGBTIQ+) people in Trinidad and Tobago do not enjoy equal protection of the law in several other regards, such as legal recognition of their gender identity and relationships, access to legal process for marital property distribution and domestic abuse protection orders, and immigration. LGBTIQ+ individuals are also not protected under the Equal Opportunity Act or specific hate crime laws and report experiencing discrimination, violence, lack of protection by law enforcement and government officials, and stigma while accessing services. Trinidad and Tobago lacks training and monitoring mechanisms to oversee improvement of LGBTIQ+ rights within the country. For example, it does not have a national human rights institution in compliance with the Paris Principles. There has been a change in government since the last UPR and, while the current government enjoys an overwhelming majority in Parliament, it has not utilized this majority to effect change to better protect LGBTIQ+ rights in Trinidad and Tobago. For example, the Government has said that it is considering increasing resources to combat HIV/AIDS but has yet to act. In addition, the Government has declared states of emergency that have displaced constitutionally guaranteed rights and restricted freedom of expression, with broad regulations that give police powers to search, arrest, and detain without cause or warrant.
In this report, we use the acronym LGBTIQ+ to refer to individuals who self-identify as
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and other sexual and gender minorities.
These terms necessarily do not include everyone who may experience violations of their
human rights on the basis of their real or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity,
gender expression, and/or sex characteristics (“SOGIESC”), which is why we also include
a “+” with the acronym. Any use of a modified acronym is intentional in that we are
speaking only about certain members of the LGBTIQ+ population
