Yvonne Ba­boolal

Trinidad and To­ba­go is now one of the few coun­tries in the world to recog­nise that women's rights are on par with hu­man rights. So says so­cial ac­tivist Di­ana Ma­habir-Wy­att short­ly af­ter she re­ceived the medal for the De­vel­op­ment of Women (Gold) at the In­de­pen­dence Day Awards at Queen's Hall on Wednes­day night. For the first time an award is be­ing giv­en for out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of women's rights and is­sues in T&T. She was one of three women to re­ceive the ac­co­lade, the oth­er two be­ing Hazel Brown, Co-or­di­na­tor of the Net­work of NGOs and Bren­da Gopeesingh, head of the Hin­du Women's Or­gan­i­sa­tion (HWO).

Ma­habir-Wy­att said : "I am very pleased this award ex­ists in T&T and T&T is one of the few coun­tries in the world that recog­nis­es that women's rights are on par with hu­man rights. It is a cred­it to T&T this is hap­pen­ing. It is a very rare and pre­cious thing to have this award." Asked if she felt that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar be­ing a woman had any­thing to do with it, she said: "I hope so. If so, it brings a kind of aware­ness of women's rights that no one has ever done be­fore. It is a cred­it to her and to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter."

Of the 48 per­sons who re­ceived na­tion­al awards this year, 15 were women. Gopeesingh said she feels ho­n­oured that the work the HWO is do­ing is recog­nised at a na­tion­al lev­el. Gopeesingh said that the HWO's work in­cludes ad­dress­ing the is­sue of vi­o­lence against women. She said the or­gan­i­sa­tion is work­ing at present with the Unit­ed Na­tions on a pro­gramme deal­ing with vi­o­lence against women. She said this is in prepa­ra­tion for the In­ter­na­tion­al Day For the Elim­i­na­tion of Vi­o­lence Against Women on No­vem­ber 25.