This is the Dominican Republic's weakest dimension — and, unusually, one where protection has recently gone backwards rather than simply not advancing. Same-sex activity is legal, and a November 2025 Constitutional Court ruling (TC/1225/25) struck down the old ban on gay people serving in the police and armed forces — a genuine step forward. But the wider legal frame is restrictive: the 2010 Constitution defines marriage as between a man and a woman (so there is no same-sex marriage or joint adoption), legal gender change is not possible, and there are no hate-crime protections. The penal-code reforms of 2021 and 2024–25 actually removed sexual orientation from the list of characteristics protected against discrimination — a rollback that local activists fought hard. Public attitudes are among the more conservative in the Americas. The DR is not covered by the ILGA Rainbow Europe index (Europe only), so this score comes from the Equaldex Equality Index.

The Dominican Republic holds genuinely competitive elections and the EIU rates it a "flawed democracy" (6.62, 2024) — and it was the biggest improver in Latin America that year. Press freedom is comparatively healthy for the region: Reporters Without Borders ranks the DR 43rd of 180 (2025), ahead of several EU countries, with the main risks being economic pressure on newsrooms and occasional political interference rather than open repression. The persistent weak spot is corruption, which also drags on the rule-of-law score below.

A clearly improving headline: the DR climbed 21 places in the WEF Global Gender Gap Report 2025 (0.730, 61st), one of the year's biggest gains, with women well-represented in education and rising in politics. But that index measures the gap between women and men, not the full picture — and one thing it doesn't capture matters a lot here: the Dominican Republic has one of the world's most restrictive abortion laws, a total ban with no exceptions, even for rape, incest, or to save the woman's life. Gender-based violence and adolescent-pregnancy rates are also high. (Fair Away's women's-rights scoring is under review in 2026 precisely because the WEF index misses reproductive rights — see Sources.)

The Dominican Republic ranks 76th of 143 in the WJP Rule of Law Index 2025 (0.50) — mid-table, but it was the single largest global improver that year, on the back of criminal-justice reforms. Corruption and uneven enforcement remain the main drags. For ordinary tourists the system is predictable, but petty bribery still surfaces in some encounters, and property or contract disputes can be slow.

The US Department of Labor downgraded the Dominican Republic to "Minimal Advancement" in 2024 — a step backwards. Child labour is documented in agriculture (sugarcane, coffee, rice and tomatoes) and, in some coastal areas, in commercial sexual exploitation linked to tourism. A structural driver sits underneath it: children without identity documents — disproportionately those of Haitian descent, after the 2013 Constitutional Court ruling that stripped citizenship from many — are denied schooling and social services, which pushes them toward work. This is the "political background behind the beaches" that a tourist rarely sees but that shapes real lives.