Human rights in the Dominican Republic
[1] These rights and freedoms have developed over time in accordance with the Dominican Republic's expansion from the former Spanish colony of the Captaincy General of Santo Domingo to its modern state formation.
The various administrations of the Dominican Republic have historically come under fire for their poor human rights record, which includes extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, attacks on press freedoms and restrictions on the movement of migrants.
[1] This was primarily due to the 2013 Constitutional Tribunal decision which deprived ethnically Haitian Dominicans of citizenship and the government's following inability to compensate for and correct the discriminatory treatment in the wake of international outcry.
[10][11] Notable Dominican intellectual Manuel Arturo Peña Batlle once stated: “....there is no feeling of humanity, nor political reason, nor any circumstantial convenience that can force us to look indifferently at the Haitian penetration.
[9] The constitution introduced in January 2010 garnered further criticism when it expanded its exceptions for citizenships to include children born in the Dominican Republic to non-citizen parents.
285-04, denied undocumented Haitian migrants and their descendants a number of human rights including the ability to enrol in tertiary education, their capacity for employment or their access to an acceptable standard of health care.
[14] The decision was met with widespread condemnation from the international human rights community and resulted in calls to restore their citizenship and put an end to forced deportations.
In 2014, the current President of the Dominican Republic, Danila Medina instituted Law 169/14 with the publicly stated intention of working to restore the nationality of the undocumented migrant families affected.
However, the law was widely criticised for its failure to automatically reinstate Dominican nationality, which has currently left thousands in a condition of statelessness and vulnerability to the exploitation of their rights.
2002) postulates that the intensity of the government crackdown on prostitution is due to outrage over deviation from the monogamous, heterosexual reproductive relationship norms which dominate Dominican society.
[17] As of 2019, abortion remains a criminal offence in the Dominican Republic, according to article 37 of the current constitution which enshrines the right to life “from conception to death”.
[18] In December 2014, President Danilo Medina promoted a series of sweeping reforms to the Dominican Republic's penal code, with his contentious proposal to decriminalize abortion in instances of rape, incest and threat to the life of the mother receiving a significant amount of local and international media attention.
[4] While the Dominican Criminal Code does not expressly prohibit homosexuality or cross-dressing, it also does not address discrimination or harassment on account of sexual orientation or gender identity, nor does it recognize same sex unions in any form, whether it be marriage or partnerships.
