Jamaica has recorded the most incidents of human rights violation when compared to its Caribbean neighbours.

According to the regional civil society-led human rights reporting mechanism, the Shared Incident Database (SID), of the 1,413 reports received for the period August 2013 to 2018, Jamaica had a total of 505 incidents, most of which were violence against males.

Guyana had the second highest recorded incidents, at 404, followed by Suriname, with 315.

The SID data showed that in Jamaica, 52.1 per cent of the incidents were reported by males. They accounted for approximately one and a half times the proportion of cases, compared to females at 33.5 per cent.

Transwomen also reported nine times the number of cases as transmen. There was one case where the person did not disclose their gender.

“The idea behind the shared incident database came about to develop some sort of mechanism through which you could have the systematic documentation of rights violation by people who were living with HIV and other key affected populations,” said Ivan Cruickshank, executive director at The Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition (CVC), whose organisation spearheaded and piloted SID.

“After looking at how members of the key population groups in particular were responding to issues around rights violations, we realised that there was no systematic documentation of the incidents that were occurring. Read morevia Stabroek News