Caribbean & Central America - March 2018 (ISSN 1741-4458)

Costa Rica is currently facing one of its most divided periods in modern history. On 9 January, in the middle of the 2018 general election campaign, the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Corte-IDH) issued an Advisory Opinion on same-sex marriage which has exposed deep conservatism within the country.

The Corte-IDH ruling states that all members of the Organization of American States (OAS) must guarantee same-sex couples the same civil rights as heterosexual couples, including marriage. It also mandates the recognition and regulation of procedures that provide for the right to change one’s name and have one’s personal identity information reflect the gender one prefers.

This ruling has divided public opinion. On one side, civil-society organisations representing the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and/or intersex community, such as Transvida, along with women’s rights groups such as Cefemina, hailed the ruling as a step forward in human rights for all. On the other, religious and conservative groups, including the Episcopal Conference of Costa Rica, claim this was a violation of Costa Rican self-determination and sovereignty.

However, the divisions exposed by this ruling had emerged years earlier. Since the start of the term in May 2014 of the current centre-left Partido Acción Ciudadana (PAC) government led by President Luis Guillermo Solís, recognition of LGBTI rights has been controversial. In November 2014, the Costa Rican social security system (CCSS) allowed any homosexual couple (able to prove they were living in a domestic partnership) to extend their social insurance to their partner. This was done even when there was no legal recognition of a same-sex domestic partnership in place yet. In May 2015 President Solís signed an executive order banning any form of discrimination against people based on their sexual orientation in public institutions. In September 2017 the education ministry updated the sexual education curriculum in primary and secondary schools, to include subjects like recognising and respecting sexual diversity.

This progress made by the government, which, in line with its professed commitment to LGBTI rights had filed the petition to the Corte-IDH in 2016, was met with criticism and protests from evangelical and conservative sectors. These groups began to “warn” the public about the intrusion of “gender ideology” and the “international LGBTI agenda” promoted by external organisations like the United Nations (UN) and OAS. When the Corte-IDH gave its ruling, these “warnings” about international intervention in favour of LGBTI rights became real for their followers, prompting an immediate reaction. The promise by Fabricio Alvarado Muñoz, an evangelical preacher and presidential candidate for the small opposition Restauración Nacional (RN), to remove Costa Rica from among the Corte-IDH’s member states, has been directly linked to his surprise surge in the polls in the final stages of the campaign, ultimately winning the first round. Yet in the 1 April second round, he faces the PAC’s Carlos Alvarado Quesada, one of the few candidates who from the start declared support for same-sex marriage, setting the stage for further polarisation in the run-off campaign. Regardless of the second-round result, in the legislative vote for the 57-member unicameral legislature, which took place also on 4 February, the RN secured 14 seats – already an unexpected win for the evangelical-conservative sector.

Meanwhile, these divisions have already gone beyond politics. Since the Corte-IDH ruling, human rights groups are warning of a rise in attacks targeting the LGBTI community. On 14 February the Costa Rican ombudsman issued a statement warning that the atmosphere in the country had become “deeply polarised” with regard to the issue while civil-society groups have raised similar concerns.

• Civil-society concerns

On 21 February, a civil-society group Frente por los Derechos Igualitarios (FDI) complained that political campaigning ahead of the 1 April presidential second round had been marked by an increase in attacks targeting the LGBTI community following the 4 February first round election. FDI spokesperson Michelle Jones told Spanish newswire Efe that there were at least 26 cases of individuals who had suffered physical and verbal aggressions, claiming that prior to the electoral process such cases were rare.