The Dominican Republic will adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, JNS has learned.
Víctor Bisonó, the country’s foreign minister, confirmed the move, which makes it the seventh Latin American states to accept the definition and its associated examples of contemporary Jew-hate.
Argentina holds the sole IHRA full member status in Latin America, while six other Latin American countries have previously adopted the definition, those being Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama and Uruguay.
The Latin American and Caribbean Parliament, a consultative assembly made up of national parliamentarians representing 23 countries, has also adopted it.
Included in the definition is guidance on recognising when criticism of Israel crosses the line into antisemitism by applying double standards, denying the Jewish people’s right to self-determination, or using classic antisemitic tropes.
Estimates vary on the number of Jews living in the Dominican Republic from 100 to 3,000.
However, the country, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, holds a unique place in Jewish history as the first sovereign country that offered to accept mass Jewish immigration prior to and during the Holocaust.
It was the only country in the 1940s that offered asylum to a significant number of Jewish refugees, stating it would accept up to 100,000, though the great majority never made it.
The country’s agricultural industry also has deep Jewish ties, with kibbutzniks in then British Mandatory Palestine brought in to assist with farming in the Dominican town of Sosúa, while the country’s biggest producer of milk and cheese was founded by Holocaust refugees.
There are only two synagogues in the republic, neither with a permanent rabbi, but a Jewish cemetery, charity, and mikveh still operate there, along with several community organisations.
The Dominican Republic had previously engaged with the Combat Antisemitism Movement and the Israel Allies Foundation to review its potential adoption of the IHRA definition.
A source told JNS that the Trump administration in Washington is working closely with the government of Argentina to bring more Latin American countries into the IHRA fold, and that progress is expected to be made public soon.
Globally, 46 national governments have adopted the definition, along with dozens of US states and more than 1,000 global entities. Just last year, 67 entities worldwide adopted the IHRA definition, a 97 per cent increase from the 34 adoptions recorded the previous year, according to the Combat Antisemitism Movement.
The source said the Dominican Republic's adoption of IHRA is due to the efforts of the Combat Antisemitism Movement, along with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Yehuda Kaploun, a rabbi and the State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism.
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