Jamaica

Located in the Caribbean Sea, Jamaica occupies the third largest island in the Greater Antilles Group, south of Cuba and West of Haiti. Since gaining independence from Britain in 1962, Jamaica has maintained a parliamentary democracy led by a prime minister who, along with the cabinet, appoints a Governor General to act as representative of the British monarch, still ceremonial head of state. Decades of uneven growth and inequality have held Jamaica back from stability and the full realisation of human rights, with the high levels of violent crime being matched by significant police abuses and a brutal criminal justice system, alongside the approval of widespread anti-LGBT prejudice in national law.