Human Rights Analysis: Small Countries

Small Countries human rights analysis for asylum practice usually means the twelve smaller Latin American and Caribbean states that fall outside the headline attention paid to Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil — the countries where our "Small Countries, Big Dangers" series has repeatedly returned: El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Costa Rica, Belize, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana. Each of these states produces distinctive asylum profiles that are frequently under-documented in receiving-country tribunals precisely because their overall diaspora footprints are smaller. This article maps the twelve states for practitioners, walks through the country-specific patterns, and identifies the Convention grounds most productive for claimants in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and the European Union.[1]

The framing here is practical. A smaller country's asylum caseload is often better understood by focusing on two or three specific persecution patterns rather than treating the country as a generic human-rights concern. El Salvador's asylum profile is dominated by gang violence and the post-2022 state of exception; Nicaragua's by opposition-political persecution and the 2023 nationality-stripping; Cuba's by intensified political-dissent prosecutions since the 11 July 2021 protests; Haiti's by gang-controlled Port-au-Prince and the aftermath of the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. Each requires its own analytic frame.

El Salvador: the state of exception

El Salvador's asylum profile shifted decisively in March 2022 with President Nayib Bukele's declaration of a state of exception (régimen de excepción) following a March 2022 weekend of 87 gang-related killings. The Legislative Assembly approved the measure through Decree 333 of 27 March 2022 and has extended it in successive 30-day increments since — as of September 2026, the state of exception has been renewed 42 consecutive times without meaningful legislative or judicial oversight. It suspends constitutional protections under Articles 12 (habeas corpus), 13 (limits on detention), 20 (privacy), 21 (free association), and 24 (correspondence).[2]

The scale of detentions is unprecedented in the region. Cristosal, Human Rights Watch, and the Salvadoran human rights office have documented over 80,000 detentions since March 2022 — approximately 1.5% of the total adult male population. Detainees are held in the CECOT (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo), the mega-prison opened in January 2023 with capacity for 40,000. Independent monitoring is prohibited; internal deaths and torture have been documented by leaked photographs, family testimony, and released detainees. Cristosal recorded 261 deaths in state custody between March 2022 and December 2024, many showing signs of torture.

The Salvadoran asylum profile now includes not only historical gang-violence victims but a new cohort of victims of the state of exception itself. Common categories are former detainees released after weeks or months without charge who continue to face police surveillance, family members of persons killed in custody, defence lawyers who represented CECOT detainees, journalists reporting on abuses, and community leaders who publicly criticised the exception. The state-of-exception cases raise political-opinion grounds; the historical gang cases turn on particular social group under Matter of A-B-, III 28 I&N Dec. 199 (A.G. 2021).

El Salvador has traded one horror for another. The gangs are less visible on the streets. But 80,000 people have disappeared into a prison system that does not admit international monitoring, and hundreds of them are already dead. The horror has been institutionalised, not ended.
Cristosal, "Deprivation of Liberty in El Salvador" (2024 update)

Nicaragua: Ortega's war on civil society

Nicaragua under the co-presidency of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has consolidated one of the most systematic political-persecution regimes in the Americas. The April 2018 protests produced approximately 355 killings by state forces documented by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights' Grupo Interdisciplinario de Expertos Independientes (GIEI). Since then the government has closed over 5,700 NGOs, revoked the legal status of the Nicaraguan Academy of Language and the Jesuit Universidad Centroamericana, expelled multiple foreign religious congregations, and — most consequentially for asylum practice — passed Law 1145 in February 2023 permitting the stripping of citizenship from persons deemed "traitors to the homeland."[3]

The 15 February 2023 order deprived 94 Nicaraguans of citizenship after their release from prison and deportation to the United States. A second order on 16 February 2023 stripped a further 222 political prisoners, opposition figures, journalists, and clergy of nationality — including Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa, subsequently exiled to the Vatican in January 2024. The total is now 316 documented cases. Nicaragua thereby created something rare in modern refugee practice — a category of persons rendered stateless by executive act on political grounds, engaging Article 1(2) of the 1954 Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons and Article 15(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Nicaraguan asylum profiles include exiled opposition figures (from Unidad Nacional Azul y Blanco, Unamos, Frente Amplio por la Democracia), released political prisoners, Catholic clergy (dozens of priests have been expelled or forced to flee), journalists (Confidencial's staff has largely relocated to Costa Rica), student-movement figures from 2018, and campesino community leaders. Costa Rica hosts approximately 240,000 Nicaraguans in asylum-adjacent status; the US, Spain, and Panama host smaller communities.

Cuba: post-11 July 2021 political persecution

Cuba's asylum profile changed materially after the 11 July 2021 (11J) protests — the largest anti-government demonstrations since the 1959 revolution. Approximately 1,300 protesters were prosecuted under the Penal Code as amended in 2021, including under Article 149 (public disorder), Article 200 (sedition), and Article 202 (contempt) with sentences up to 25 years. The Prisoners Defenders database records approximately 1,150 political prisoners as of mid-2026, the highest figure in decades.[4]

The 2019 constitutional reform and 2022 Family Code passed under a genuinely popular referendum have overshadowed the concurrent tightening of political-dissent laws. Decree Law 35 of 2021 imposed extensive online-speech restrictions. The new Penal Code that entered force in December 2022 criminalised receipt of foreign funding for civil society activity, expanded sedition definitions, and increased sentences for political offences.

Cuban asylum profiles include 11J protesters and their families, artists and intellectuals connected to the San Isidro Movement and 27N movement, LGBTQ+ Cubans (despite the 2022 marriage equality vote, LGBTI+ activism critical of the government continues to produce persecution), Afro-Cuban activists from the Movimiento San Isidro milieu, dissenting journalists (including 14yMedio staff), and members of the Cuban Ladies in White. The US CBP One programme and subsequent policies through 2024–2026 have created a specific Cuban parole framework distinct from asylum.

Haiti: gang-controlled Port-au-Prince

Haiti has descended into a governance and security crisis that leading commentators now describe as failed statehood. Following the 7 July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, no constitutionally elected officials remain in office. The Bel-Air, Cité Soleil, and Martissant neighbourhoods of Port-au-Prince have been under gang coalition control since 2022. Prime Minister Ariel Henry resigned in April 2024 after gangs led by Jimmy "Barbecue" Chérizier stormed multiple prisons and closed the international airport. The Presidential Transitional Council installed in April 2024 continues to function alongside a Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission authorised by UN Security Council Resolution 2699 (2023).[5]

The IOM Displacement Tracking Matrix records approximately 700,000 Haitians internally displaced by mid-2026, mostly from Port-au-Prince neighbourhoods. UN OCHA has recorded a humanitarian caseload of 5.5 million people in need. Documented human rights abuses include mass killings (the December 2024 Wharf Jérémie killings of over 200 elderly persons accused of witchcraft, subsequent gang massacres), systematic sexual violence, gang recruitment of children, and destruction of hospitals and schools.

Haitian asylum profiles include victims of specific gang violence (rape survivors, family members of persons killed, former forced recruits), journalists (Haiti recorded 8 journalist killings in 2023–2025 per RSF), human rights defenders (Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains — RNDDH staff have received specific threats), women (the Kay Fanm and Solidarite Fanm Ayisyen — SOFA networks document specific patterns), former security-service members, and LGBTI+ Haitians (Kouraj and other organisations document targeted killings). US TPS Haiti and the CBP One parole framework provide specific channels alongside asylum.

Guatemala: post-CICIG accountability failures

Guatemala's asylum profile continues to be dominated by MS-13 and Barrio 18 gang violence (see our companion coverage of Central American gang violence), femicide (the 2023 rate of 8.2 per 100,000 women is among the region's highest), and — increasingly — persecution of indigenous land defenders and anti-corruption investigators following the 2019 expulsion of the CICIG (International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala). The election of President Bernardo Arévalo in August 2023 produced brief hope for democratic renewal but has been resisted by the "pacto de corruptos" networks in the Public Ministry and judiciary throughout 2024–2026.[6]

Guatemalan asylum profiles include gang-recruitment resisters (young men targeted for extortion or forced recruitment), indigenous women fleeing gender-based violence and forced marriage in Maya communities, indigenous land defenders (Maya Q'eqchi', Maya Ixil, Maya Mam applicants targeted for opposition to mining, hydroelectric, and monoculture concessions), former CICIG-cooperating prosecutors and judges (Iván Velásquez's team members have been forced into exile), and LGBTI+ Guatemalans facing family and social violence.

Caribbean profiles: Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Trinidad, Guyana

Jamaica presents a mixed picture. On democratic institutions Jamaica functions relatively well; on gang-related violence and LGBTI+ persecution the picture is severe. Jamaica's homicide rate consistently ranks among the world's highest (over 45 per 100,000 in 2023). J-FLAG and TransWave document sustained LGBTI+ persecution under the colonial-era Offences Against the Person Act sections 76 and 79. Jamaican LGBTI+ asylum claims have produced substantial UK Upper Tribunal case law including SW (lesbians) Jamaica [2011] UKUT 251 and DW (Homosexual men) Jamaica [2005] UKAIT 168.[7]

The Dominican Republic's asylum profile is dominated by anti-Haitian discrimination and the effective statelessness of Dominicans of Haitian descent following the Constitutional Court's Sentence 168-13 of September 2013. Approximately 200,000 persons have been affected. Since 2020 the Abinader government has intensified deportations to Haiti even as Haiti has become manifestly unsafe.

Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana produce smaller asylum caseloads but distinctive profiles. Trinidad has received substantial Venezuelan refugees under a specific bilateral framework; the domestic asylum profile is limited to occasional LGBTI+ cases under the Sexual Offences Act sections 13 and 16. Guyana's asylum profile is emerging around indigenous land defenders in the interior, with ExxonMobil-related development projects producing new tensions.

Country-by-country risk overview

Comparative flows

Legal framework across the small countries

Convention analysis for small-country cases varies by country and profile. El Salvadoran state-of-exception cases turn on political opinion (imputed or actual criticism of the Bukele government) alongside particular-social-group claims for gang-related profiles. Nicaraguan cases are archetypal political-opinion cases with the additional statelessness dimension for Law 1145 victims. Cuban 11J cases apply political opinion straightforwardly. Haitian cases turn primarily on particular-social-group frameworks — women, LGBTI+ persons, journalists — combined with Article 3 ECHR non-refoulement given the manifest failure of state protection in gang-controlled areas.[8]

US Matter of A-B-, III 28 I&N Dec. 199 (A.G. 2021) framework supports El Salvador, Guatemala, and Haiti gang and gender-based-violence claims. UK Fornah [2006] UKHL 46 framework supports gender-based PSGs. HJ (Iran) [2010] UKSC 31 applies for Jamaican, Trinidadian, and Guyanese LGBTI+ cases. Canadian Ward v Canada [1993] 2 SCR 689 and IRB Chairperson's Guideline 4 apply across the region. EU Qualification Directive Article 15(c) applies to Haiti given generalised violence in gang-controlled areas.

Conclusion

Small Countries human rights conditions across the twelve smaller Latin American and Caribbean states in September 2026 present a striking heterogeneity. El Salvador's state of exception has produced over 80,000 detentions since March 2022; Nicaragua has stripped 316 persons of nationality since February 2023; Cuba maintains approximately 1,150 political prisoners after the 11 July 2021 protests; Haiti has 700,000 internally displaced by gang violence; Guatemala continues to produce gang, gender-based, and indigenous land-defender flows; Jamaica combines otherwise-functional democracy with severe LGBTI+ persecution; the Dominican Republic has created effective statelessness for Dominicans of Haitian descent under Sentence 168-13. Convention grounds are readily available — political opinion for El Salvadoran, Nicaraguan, and Cuban cases; particular social group for gender-based, gang-related, and LGBTI+ profiles; race and family for Dominicans of Haitian descent; Article 3 ECHR and Article 15(c) for Haiti. What distinguishes small-country asylum practice is the evidentiary gap in receiving-country tribunals: expert reports and specific country-conditions documentation from Cristosal (El Salvador), Confidencial (Nicaragua), Cubalex (Cuba), RNDDH (Haiti), CALDH (Guatemala), J-FLAG (Jamaica), and Reconoci.do (Dominican Republic) supply the corroboration that decides these cases. Files built with country-specific documentation and expert-witness reports win at rates comparable to larger-country cases; files that treat small countries as generic regional risk zones do not.

For related coverage, see our articles on MS-13 recruitment in Honduras, Honduras femicide, and cross-country pieces on family persecution, sur place claims, and expert witness methodology. Practical filing guidance is in our Asylum Guide. Latin American and Caribbean country experts are listed at Find an Expert Witness.