Last week I rather cheekily pretended shock that T&T's Government, in the person of Dr Bhoendradatt Tewarie, Minister of Planning and the Economy, had signed the Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development. The Consensus was the document coming out of the First Session of the Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, which took place from August 12- 15 in Uruguay.
I specifically mentioned some sections of the document that spoke to the regional need for the increase in the quality and quantity of age-appropriate sexual health education for young people, and for the reform of abortion laws in T&T. I also mentioned clauses in the document that talked about the need for improved guarantees of human rights of all poor, oppressed and marginalised groups in the region. One of those groups is the LGBT population in T&T.This week I'd like to go into a little bit of analysis of why I singled out those particular clauses. (Regular readers of my column would already be familiar with these themes and ideas, so I crave their indulgence at this point. However, I think it's important to frame the relationship between our realities in T&T and the Montevideo Consensus.)