KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Sophia Chote and Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi are push­ing for the Vic­tims’ Rights Bill, 2026, to be sent to a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee, warn­ing that the pro­posed law out­lines pro­tec­tions for vic­tims with­out clear­ly ex­plain­ing how they would be en­forced.

The bill seeks to es­tab­lish stan­dards for the treat­ment and pro­tec­tion of vic­tims with­in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, in­clud­ing their rights to in­for­ma­tion, par­tic­i­pa­tion and sup­port through­out in­ves­ti­ga­tions and pros­e­cu­tions.

Dur­ing de­bate in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, Chote ques­tioned the bill’s treat­ment of child vic­tims, say­ing that de­spite ref­er­ences to chil­dren’s pro­tec­tion, the leg­is­la­tion of­fered lit­tle de­tail be­yond a pass­ing men­tion in clause 10.

“I think that is a whole area of spe­cial­i­ty that needs to be con­sid­ered and ad­dressed be­cause chil­dren who are vic­tims may be vic­tims of dif­fer­ent kinds of crime. They may be dif­fer­ent ages, right up to 18. They must be treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly, and with spe­cif­ic ref­er­ence to their needs,” she said.

Chote al­so raised con­cerns that spous­es were ex­clud­ed from the de­f­i­n­i­tion of “fam­i­ly mem­ber”, de­spite fam­i­ly mem­bers be­ing al­lowed to act on be­half of vic­tims.

She al­so ques­tioned clause 7, which states the Act is not in­tend­ed to cre­ate le­gal rights, ask­ing how vic­tims would en­force pro­tec­tions un­der the leg­is­la­tion.

Turn­ing to the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, Chote ques­tioned whether the in­sti­tu­tion had been ad­e­quate­ly con­sult­ed, point­ing to se­vere staff short­ages and crim­i­nal case back­logs.

She said while ad­di­tion­al judges have been as­signed to long­stand­ing crim­i­nal mat­ters, the DPP’s of­fice does not have enough ex­pe­ri­enced pros­e­cu­tors to man­age those cas­es.

Chote said a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee would al­low for con­sul­ta­tion with stake­hold­ers and a deep­er ex­am­i­na­tion of how the leg­is­la­tion should ad­dress dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories of vic­tims.

Al-Rawi raised sim­i­lar con­cerns, ar­gu­ing the leg­is­la­tion lacked the le­gal struc­ture nec­es­sary to make vic­tims’ rights en­force­able.

De­scrib­ing the bill as “cos­met­ic, un­work­able and float­ing with­out roots”, the for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al said it could be fixed through a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee process.

“But it can be fixed, Mr Pres­i­dent. It can be fixed if it is re­ferred to a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee,” he said.

Al-Rawi ar­gued the leg­is­la­tion has a “fun­da­men­tal flaw” be­cause it does not prop­er­ly in­te­grate with ex­ist­ing laws gov­ern­ing sex­u­al of­fences, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and pro­ba­tion.

He al­so crit­i­cised clause 7, not­ing the bill specif­i­cal­ly states it does not cre­ate le­gal rights, af­fect the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of writ­ten law, or cre­ate grounds for civ­il ac­tion.

Re­fer­ring to claus­es deal­ing with the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, Al-Rawi warned the bill could in­trude on the con­sti­tu­tion­al dis­cre­tion of the DPP in crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions and plea ne­go­ti­a­tions.

He main­tained that while the leg­is­la­tion had no­ble in­ten­tions, vic­tims’ rights could not ex­ist “in the­o­ry alone” with­out clear le­gal mech­a­nisms to make them en­force­able.