Ali­cia Llanos

T&T's leg­isla­tive agen­da must help and not hin­der the pro­tec­tion of hu­man rights for all cit­i­zens.This was a mes­sage con­veyed by the Fam­i­ly Plan­ning As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (FPATT) chair­man Ger­ry Brooks on Tues­day.He was speak­ing at FPATT's re­port to the na­tion ti­tled Build­ing Tol­er­ance and Em­pa­thy: Erad­i­cat­ing Stig­ma and Dis­crim­i­na­tion.It was held at the Crowne Plaza Ho­tel and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, Port-of-Spain.

Brooks said all leg­is­la­tion must pro­tect cit­i­zens from dis­crim­i­na­tion, draw­ing ex­am­ple to re­cent de­bate in the Sen­ate per­tain­ing to the is­sue of same sex mar­riage and the law.He said FPATT be­lieved and ad­vo­cates that "sex­u­al­i­ty is an in­te­gral part of the per­son­hood of every hu­man be­ing in all so­ci­eties" and that non-dis­crim­i­na­tion was a ba­sic pil­lar of equal hu­man rights.Brooks said the Sen­ate's dis­cus­sion, which was ad­ju­di­cat­ed to an­oth­er time, showed that "Gov­ern­ment and so­ci­ety are deeply di­vid­ed on the is­sue."

He said the FPATT held dis­cus­sions with its part­ner group Coali­tion for In­clu­sion of Sex­u­al Ori­en­ta­tion (CAISO) and it was de­ter­mined gay, les­bian and trans­gen­der mem­bers of so­ci­ety sim­ply want­ed to be free of dis­crim­i­na­tion and abuse.Brooks said work was need­ed by the Gov­ern­ment and so­ci­etal stake­hold­ers to work to­wards ed­u­cat­ing the pub­lic and erad­i­cat­ing stig­ma and dis­crim­i­na­tion based on sex­u­al pref­er­ence.He al­so called for the end of stig­ma and dis­crim­i­na­tion against HIV and Aids-pos­i­tive cit­i­zens.

Brooks said FPATT be­lieved that all per­sons, re­gard­less their HIV sta­tus, had equal rights to ac­cess ed­u­ca­tion, em­ploy­ment and oth­er so­cial ben­e­fits with­out dis­crim­i­na­tion.Ad­dress­ing the rapid­ly ris­ing HIV rate in T&T, Brooks called on At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan to make the wil­ful spread of HIV a crim­i­nal of­fence.He said sta­tis­tics showed there were at least four new cas­es of HIV dai­ly in T&T.He said if noth­ing was done to des­tig­ma­tise HIV/Aids and to end dis­crim­i­na­tion against those liv­ing with the dis­ease, lit­tle to no progress would be made in try­ing to con­trol the spread of HIV/Aids in T&T.