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reunification. In May, the High Court of 

Eastern Denmark ruled that the 

postponement of family reunification of a 

Syrian refugee with his wife was not in 

violation of the right to family life under the 

European Convention on Human Rights. In 

November, the Supreme Court confirmed this 

ruling.

In January, the Supreme Court ruled that 

the compulsory overnight stay and twice daily 

reporting regime at a centre for individuals on 

“tolerated stay” (those excluded from 

protection but who could not be deported), 

constituted a disproportionate measure 

amounting to custody when extended beyond 

a period of four years. The government 

implemented the ruling, but also decided that 

any person leaving the centre to live with 

their family would lose their right to health 

care and financial assistance for food.

In March, the Parliamentary Ombudsman 

concluded that government policy to separate 

asylum-seeking couples when one partner 

was under the age of 18 was a violation of the 

Danish Act on Public Administration and 

possibly a violation of the right to family life. 

The policy did not provide for a process to 

determine whether the separation was in the 

interest of the younger spouse and did not 

consider their opinion.

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

In April, a proposal by the opposition to 

introduce a consent-based definition of rape, 

in line with the Council of Europe Convention 

on Preventing and Combating Violence 

against Women and Domestic Violence 

(Istanbul Convention) ratified by Denmark in 

2014, was rejected in Parliament. In 

November, the Council of Europe's Group of 

Experts on Action against Violence against 

Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO) 

encouraged the Danish authorities to change 

the current sexual violence legislation and 

base it on the notion of freely given consent 

as required by the Istanbul Convention.

RIGHTS OF LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, 

TRANSGENDER AND INTERSEX PEOPLE

In January, Parliament’s landmark 2016 

resolution to end the pathologization of 

transgender identities was implemented. 

However, existing procedural rules on access 

to hormone treatment and gender-affirming 

surgery continued to unreasonably prolong 

the gender recognition process for 

transgender people.

No national guidelines from the Danish 

Health Authority outlined how doctors should 

treat children with variations of sex 

characteristics and the approach was not 

human rights-based. This allowed non-

emergency invasive and irreversible medical 

procedures to be carried out on children, 

typically under the age of 10, in violation of 

the UN Convention on the Rights of the 

Child. These procedures can be carried out 

despite the lack of medical research to 

support the need for surgical intervention, 

and despite documentation of the risk of 

lifelong harmful effects.

1

 In October the UN 

Committee on the Rights of the Child raised 

concerns regarding surgical interventions on 

intersex children.

1. Europe: First, do no harm − ensuring the rights of children with 

variations of sex characteristics in Denmark and Germany (

EUR 

01/6086/2017

)

DOMINICAN 

REPUBLIC

Dominican Republic

Head of state and government: Danilo Medina Sánchez

Limited progress was made in solving the 

statelessness crisis. Abortion remained 

criminalized in all circumstances. Excessive 

use of force by the police and gender-based 

violence continued.

BACKGROUND

The Dominican Republic suffered from a 

series of natural disasters that hit the 

Caribbean during the year, including two 

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major hurricanes in September. This, along 

with previous flooding earlier in the year, left 

tens of thousands of people temporarily 

displaced and badly damaged infrastructure. 

Like many small, developing island states, 

the Dominican Republic remained very 

vulnerable to climate change, which 

scientists linked to the increasingly extreme 

weather. On 21 September, the Dominican 

Republic ratified the UN Paris Agreement on 

climate change.

Allegations that several Dominican officials 

were bribed by the Brazilian construction 

company Odebrecht triggered massive 

country-wide demonstrations against 

corruption under the Green March 

movement. In September, the Inter-American 

Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) held 

a public hearing on the issue of “human 

rights and reports of impunity and corruption 

in the Dominican Republic”.

In May, the UN Special Rapporteur on the 

sale and sexual exploitation of children visited 

the country. She urged the government to put 

child protection at the core of any tourism 

strategy.

DISCRIMINATION – STATELESS 

PERSONS

The Dominican Republic continued to fail to 

uphold its international human rights 

obligations with respect to the large number 

of stateless people born in the country who 

were retroactively and arbitrarily deprived of 

their Dominican nationality in 

September 2013.

1

Law 169-14, adopted in May 2014 to 

address the statelessness crisis, continued to 

be poorly implemented. According to official 

statistics, only 13,500 people of the so-called 

“Group A” created by the law (out of an 

official estimate of 61,000 individuals) were 

able to access some sort of Dominican 

identity document proving their Dominican 

nationality. In the meantime, many had their 

original birth certificates nullified and their 

new ones transferred to a separate civil 

registry without the necessary measures in 

place to avoid further discrimination.

The naturalization plan established by Law 

169-14 for people in “Group B” (those whose 

birth was never registered in the Dominican 

Civil Registry) had made little or no progress 

during the year. Of the 8,755 individuals who 

were able to register under the new plan 

(16% of the estimated 53,000 people in 

Group B, according to the government), it 

was believed that as few as 6,545 had had 

their files approved by the authorities by the 

end of the year. The law required a two-year 

waiting period after the approval of the 

registration for them to be able to formally 

request their naturalization as Dominicans. 

By the end of the year no one was known to 

have been naturalized under the new plan. 

Most of the individuals affected remained 

stateless in the absence of another 

nationality.

During the year, the authorities failed to 

discuss, design or implement new solutions 

to guarantee the right to nationality for the 

tens of thousands of Dominican-born people 

who could not benefit from Law 169-14, in 

particular the remaining 84% of those in 

Group B, and all those who were left out of 

the scope of the 2014 legislation.

Responding to this situation, in April the 

IACHR incorporated the Dominican Republic 

in Chapter IV.B of its annual report that 

included countries in need of special human 

rights attention.

By the end of the year, no public official had 

been held accountable for discriminatory 

practices in granting registration and identity 

documents, including for the 2013 mass 

arbitrary deprivation of nationality. Affected 

people continued to be denied a range of 

human rights and were prevented from 

accessing higher education, formal 

employment or adequate health care, among 

other things.

POLICE AND SECURITY FORCES

The Office of the Prosecutor General reported 

110 killings by security forces between 

January and October. The circumstances 

around many of the killings suggested that 

they may have been unlawful. The homicide 

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