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Saturday, June 28, 2025

Hemispheric human rights body concerned about T&T

by

20150621

The In­ter-Amer­i­can Com­mis­sion on Hu­man Rights (IACHR) is call­ing on T&T to ini­ti­ate leg­isla­tive re­form to abol­ish the manda­to­ry death penal­ty and to ad­dress weak­ness­es in its equal op­por­tu­ni­ty leg­is­la­tion.In its re­port on the 154th Gen­er­al Ses­sion host­ed in Wash­ing­ton DC last March, re­leased Fri­day, the Com­mis­sion men­tions T&T and Bar­ba­dos as two Caribbean coun­tries "whose laws still con­tem­plate the manda­to­ry death penal­ty."

"Among oth­er trou­bling as­pects," the re­port says, is that "par­tic­i­pat­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions re­port­ed that while the death penal­ty has not been car­ried out in this re­gion since 2008, a num­ber of states are still op­posed to abol­ish­ing it."Both the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) ad­min­is­tra­tion and op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) sup­port the death penal­ty. In 1998, T&T with­drew from the Amer­i­can Con­ven­tion on Hu­man Rights, cit­ing the in­abil­i­ty of the IACHR to ex­pe­di­tious­ly deal with pe­ti­tions from Death Row pris­on­ers.

The re­port notes that Suri­name abol­ished the death penal­ty on March 3 and Bar­ba­dos "has made a com­mit­ment to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. It is worth not­ing that ten coun­tries in the re­gion have abol­ished the manda­to­ry death penal­ty in com­pli­ance with de­ci­sions of the in­ter-Amer­i­can hu­man rights sys­tem," the re­port says.

"The IACHR re­it­er­ates the need to move for­ward with leg­isla­tive re­forms in the coun­tries of the Greater Caribbean, so as to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment through­out this re­gion or, fail­ing that, to im­pose a mora­to­ri­um on its ap­pli­ca­tion," it adds.The Board of the Com­mis­sion is head­ed by its pres­i­dent, T&T law tu­tor and at­tor­ney Rose-Marie Belle An­toine, and in­cludes Ja­maican hu­man rights at­tor­ney, Tra­cy Robin­son, and four oth­er com­mis­sion­ers from the Unit­ed States, Mex­i­co, Chile and Paraguay.

The re­port al­so ex­press­es dis­ap­point­ment that the gov­ern­ment of T&T, which pre­pared a writ­ten re­sponse to claims made, did not par­tic­i­pate in a spe­cial hear­ing ear­li­er this year which en­ter­tained con­cerns about the coun­try's Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Act.Col­in Robin­son, who leads the Coali­tion Ad­vo­cat­ing for In­clu­sion of Sex­u­al Ori­en­ta­tion (Caiso) and at­tend­ed the March hear­ing, not­ed that both Guyana and the Ba­hamas sent their for­eign min­is­ters.He de­scribed the oc­ca­sion as "a mo­ment of acute em­bar­rass­ment" for the coun­try.

"Our for­eign af­fairs min­istry doesn't seem to see us as cit­i­zens as its stake­hold­ers," he said.The re­port notes that the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion (EOC) "on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions rec­om­mend­ed that the state ex­pand the pro­hi­bi­tion of dis­crim­i­na­tion to oth­er cat­e­gories, such as age, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and HIV sta­tus."

A March 23 state­ment from the EOC had in­di­cat­ed that pro­pos­als for re­form had ac­tu­al­ly been ini­ti­at­ed by the Com­mis­sion since 2010. A sub­mis­sion to "re­for­mu­late" the pro­pos­als was al­so made in Feb­ru­ary 2014.On Oc­to­ber 15 that year, the EOC fur­ther pro­posed that "the ground of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion be in­clud­ed for pro­tec­tion."

"How­ev­er," the IACHR re­port adds, "these rec­om­men­da­tions, which were al­so made by var­i­ous Unit­ed Na­tions com­mit­tees, re­port­ed­ly have not been fol­lowed."The In­ter-Amer­i­can Com­mis­sion al­so says that it has re­ceived in­for­ma­tion "re­gard­ing the mul­ti­ple, in­ter­re­lat­ed forms of vi­o­lence and dis­crim­i­na­tion against trans women, women liv­ing with HIV, and girls in Trinidad and To­ba­go."

It says the or­gan­i­sa­tions which made sub­mis­sions to the hear­ing "fur­ther in­di­cat­ed that peo­ple with HIV should be con­sid­ered a sep­a­rate group and not in­clud­ed in the dis­abil­i­ty cat­e­go­ry."

"The or­gan­i­sa­tions re­port­ed that women liv­ing with HIV/Aids face se­ri­ous bar­ri­ers to ob­tain­ing full ac­cess to health ser­vices, as well as se­vere stig­ma from their com­mu­ni­ties," the re­port says. "They al­so in­di­cat­ed that one of the coun­try's hu­man rights chal­lenges is the lack of a na­tion­al hu­man rights in­sti­tu­tion in line with the Paris Prin­ci­ples."

The "Paris Prin­ci­ples" re­late to a 1993 res­o­lu­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly which, among oth­er things, calls for the es­tab­lish­ment of "a na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion...vest­ed with com­pe­tence to pro­mote and pro­tect hu­man rights."

"The IACHR ex­press­es its con­cern re­gard­ing the lack of com­pli­ance with the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion's rec­om­men­da­tions, and re­quests that the state in­clude the cat­e­gories of age, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, gen­der iden­ti­ty, and HIV sta­tus as grounds on which to ban dis­crim­i­na­tion," the re­port says.


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