Discrimination
Black people, Haitians and Dominican nationals of Haitian descent suffered structural and widespread racial discrimination.
Discriminatory policies affected access to education, health and international protection.
Public officials and government institutions used discriminatory and stigmatizing rhetoric.
Human rights defenders
The government still did not commit to establishing a protection framework for human rights defenders and failed to ensure timely, independent and impartial investigations into attacks against them.
Individuals and groups defending human rights – particularly in relation to racial justice, gender and migration – faced harassment, threats and restrictions on their right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. They also reported acts of digital harassment and disclosure of their personal data.
On International Women’s Day, the authorities broke up an activity carried out by cultural collectives because participants sang in Haitian Creole.
In April, during the Great Unity March, antiracist activists and members of collectives defending the rights of Dominicans of Haitian descent were attacked and beaten by civilian groups describing the activity as a “Haitian march”.
Defenders of women’s rights and sexual and reproductive rights were subjected to physical and digital violence by nationalist and conservative groups acting with impunity.
Arbitrary deprivation of nationality
Dominicans of Haitian descent, who had been arbitrarily deprived of their nationality 12 years earlier by a Constitutional Court ruling, continued to face institutional barriers and bureaucratic hurdles to accessing Dominican identity documents. This breached the Dominican Republic’s international obligations.
Refugees’ and migrants’ rights
According to the International Organization for Migration, at least 265,215 Haitians – including 65,702 women, 13,204 boys and 11,305 girls – were expelled from the Dominican Republic during the year, in many cases collectively. The Groupe d’Appui aux Rapatriés et Réfugiés (GARR) of Haiti reported that the Dominican government had deported at least 1,057 pregnant and 3,000 breastfeeding women to Haiti in 2025.
Migration policy lacked a human rights perspective, focusing on discriminatory and repressive measures against migration. Alarming patterns of racial profiling, arbitrary detention, excessive use of force and cruel and inhuman treatment continued to be reported during migration control operations and in immigration detention centres, as were collective expulsions, which are against international law. Haitians did not have access to asylum and refugee procedures to guarantee international protection, despite the human rights crisis in their country of origin.
In April a healthcare protocol for migrants was introduced, establishing that those with irregular migratory status would be subject to deportation after receiving treatment. This protocol disproportionately affected access to health for Black people, Haitians and Dominican nationals of Haitian descent – in particular pregnant women – who were afraid to access public health services.1
Sexual and gender-based violence
A new Penal Code was approved in August establishing a total ban on abortion. It also maintained a statute of limitations for criminal proceedings relating to sexual violence against adult women; a regressive classification of the crime of intimate partner sexual violence that falls short of international standards; tolerance of physical punishment of children; and failure to punish discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
