ACHR presses Trinidad, Jamaica, Belize over states of emergency

The Gist

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) is an autonomous body of the Organisation of American States whose 2025 annual report criticises the increased and, in some cases, prolonged use of states of emergency across Caribbean countries — including Trinidad and Tobago, which has employed such measures repeatedly since December 2024 — warning that recurrent emergency powers risk normalising extraordinary measures and eroding fundamental rights.

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What Happened

The IACHR's scrutiny spans three Caribbean nations and is anchored in established inter-American human rights doctrine that predates the current security crisis.

According to the IACHR's 2025 annual report, the Commission observed with concern the continued reliance on states of emergency in Belize, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, noting potential impacts on fundamental rights including expression, association and personal liberty.
Trinidad and Tobago declared a state of emergency in December 2024 in response to escalating gang violence; it was extended in January 2025 for three months and lifted after that period, according to independently confirmed records.
The source material reports that, as of January 31 2026, T&T had spent a significant cumulative period under states of emergency since December 2024 — one external assessment cites 301 days — though precise day-counts are not independently verified.
Local reporting cited in the source material suggests another state of emergency may have been declared in early March 2026 in response to a surge in gang-related crime and intelligence of planned attacks on protective services; this has not been corroborated by publicly available official records.
According to the source material, that March 2026 measure was reportedly extended in June 2026 for three months; independent confirmation of this extension and its scheduled expiry remains pending.
In a separate but related matter, a Jamaican Supreme Court ruling in the case of Dayton Campbell v AG of Jamaica declared 17 states of emergency proclaimed between 2018 and 2023 unconstitutional, finding they lacked a legitimate purpose, were disproportionate and undermined parliamentary authority — a ruling the IACHR's 2025 report took formal note of.

Inter-American Commission Alarm Over Trinidad & Tobago’s States of Emergency – By The Numbers

The Impact

The IACHR's formal documentation of Caribbean SoE trends carries real institutional weight: it creates a public record that can inform future referrals to the Inter-American Court — a path already taken in 2021 when the Commission filed the Kevin Dial and Andrew Dottin case against Trinidad and Tobago over the mandatory death penalty.

For detainees held under the current and reportedly ongoing emergency measures, the Commission's reaffirmation that all persons must be afforded judicial guarantees and due process protections consistent with the American Declaration and the American Convention strengthens the legal basis for constitutional challenges.

Belize, where some 126 individuals were reportedly detained during operations in Belize City and the Belize District as of May 11 2026, faces similar scrutiny.

Regional governments that ignore the IACHR's call for multi-sectoral, evidence-based security strategies grounded in human rights risk escalating friction with inter-American oversight bodies.

What to watch: • Whether T&T's reported state of emergency — reportedly extended in June 2026 — expires or is further renewed in September 2026, and whether the government publishes transparency and accountability data on detentions as the IACHR has urged. • Any ruling by Caribbean national courts on the constitutionality of SoEs modelled on the Dayton Campbell v AG of Jamaica precedent, particularly in Trinidad and Tobago. • Whether the IACHR takes further formal steps — including precautionary measures or a Court referral — regarding Caribbean SoE detainees, given the Commission's stated commitment to ongoing monitoring.

"17 states of emergency proclaimed in Jamaica between 2018 and 2023 were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, which found they were not declared for a constitutionally legitimate purpose and were disproportionate within a free and democratic society."
— IACHR 2025 Annual Report, citing Dayton Campbell v AG of Jamaica

Perspectives

The IACHR insists that emergency powers are exceptional tools, not routine governance instruments.: According to the IACHR's 2025 report and its Resolution 1/2026, the Commission warns that prolonged or repeated reliance on emergency powers can normalise extraordinary measures and undermine full enjoyment of human rights, including due process and protection against arbitrary detention. It calls on states to adopt comprehensive, multi-sectoral security strategies addressing root causes of violence rather than defaulting to emergency declarations.

Caribbean governments frame SoEs as an operational necessity against organised crime.: Trinidad and Tobago's March 2026 measure was reportedly justified by a surge in violent gang-related crime and intelligence of planned attacks on protective services, while Belize's May 2026 SoE followed a security assessment indicating increased gang activity. Both governments position emergency powers as targeted, time-limited responses rather than structural policy — a characterisation the IACHR's regional chapter implicitly contests.

The Jamaican judiciary has set a regional precedent that courts, not just regional bodies, can and will constrain executive emergency powers.: The court's finding that 17 SoEs were invalid — on grounds of illegitimacy, disproportionality and erosion of parliamentary oversight — signals that domestic constitutional review is an active check on emergency governance, potentially encouraging similar litigation in Trinidad and Tobago.

C360 View

Since December 2024, Trinidad and Tobago has spent an estimated 301 of the following 425 days under a state of emergency. In Jamaica, the Supreme Court has now gone the other way entirely — ruling that 17 states of emergency declared between 2018 and 2023 were unconstitutional, lacking legitimate purpose and undermining Parliament itself.

The IACHR's 2025 report, watching both alongside Belize, draws the connection explicitly: emergency powers renewed often enough, for long enough, stop functioning as emergencies and start functioning as a standing alternative to ordinary law.

That's not an argument against acting on gang violence that is genuinely killing people. It's an argument about what happens when the exception becomes the rule.

Trinidad's reported March 2026 declaration and its June extension remain unconfirmed by official record as of writing — but if the pattern holds, T&T will have spent most of the past eighteen months under emergency rule, extended largely without the parliamentary and judicial scrutiny the Jamaican courts have now said is constitutionally required.

For a diaspora that follows "home" through headlines about crime waves, this is worth separating out: a state of emergency is not itself evidence of a government failing its citizens. But a state of emergency that never quite ends, renewed by administrative habit rather than parliamentary debate, is a different thing — and it's the thing the IACHR and Jamaica's own courts are now both naming.

Verdict: The region's security crises are real. The question the IACHR and the Dayton Campbell ruling both raise is whether emergency powers are being used to buy time for real solutions, or used instead of them — and on the evidence so far, the Caribbean hasn't settled that question in its own favour.