The Jamaican Supreme Court determined last Friday<\/a> that the so-called \u201csaving laws clause\u201d in the Jamaican constitution prevents it from inquiring into the constitutionality of the three sections of the Offences Against the Person Act<\/em> that criminalize same-sex intimacy. This misguided decision denies Jamaicans the means to protect their constitutional and human rights, and further entrenches homophobic colonial-era laws within Jamaica\u2019s justice system at a time when courts around the world are repeatedly finding that similar laws violate human rights.<\/p>\n The HIV Legal Network is incredibly disappointed with this unfortunate decision, which prioritizes an impoverished interpretation of the Jamaican constitution over the human rights of LGBTQ+ people in Jamaica. Punitive laws will continue to criminalize LGBTQ+ people in Jamaica, further fuelling the stigma and prejudice that results in horrific violence against them and damages efforts to deliver HIV prevention services, testing, treatment, and care.<\/p>\n We believe that justice must and will be realized for LGBTQ+ people living in Jamaica. We will now work with partners and other committed advocates as we consider possible next steps, despite this difficult setback.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Jamaican Supreme Court determined last Friday that the so-called \u201csaving laws clause\u201d in the Jamaican constitution prevents it from inquiring into the constitutionality of the three sections of the Offences Against the Person Act that criminalize same-sex intimacy. This misguided decision denies Jamaicans the means to protect their constitutional and human rights, and further … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"publication_topics":[153,160],"publication_language":[184],"class_list":["post-23805","news22","type-news22","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","publication_topics-lgbtq-rights","publication_topics-the-caribbean","publication_language-english"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hivlegalnetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news22\/23805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hivlegalnetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news22"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hivlegalnetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news22"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hivlegalnetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hivlegalnetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news22\/23805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23806,"href":"https:\/\/www.hivlegalnetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news22\/23805\/revisions\/23806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hivlegalnetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"publication_topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hivlegalnetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication_topics?post=23805"},{"taxonomy":"publication_language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hivlegalnetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication_language?post=23805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}