Zahra Gor­don

Hu­man rights must be at the core of the pro­posed Na­tion­al Gen­der Pol­i­cy, Min­is­ter of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment Ver­na St Rose-Greaves has said. St Rose-Greaves was speak­ing at a stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tion on the pol­i­cy at Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain, on Wednes­day. She re­ferred to the is­sues of ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty and abor­tion as "ele­phants in the room" that need­ed to be dis­cussed na­tion­al­ly. Dis­agree­ments over the two is­sues have pre­vent­ed the pol­i­cy from go­ing to Cab­i­net for the past ten years, said St Rose-Greaves, who added that her min­istry was ded­i­cat­ed to en­sur­ing hu­man rights. "Our ap­proach is a rights-based ap­proach," the min­is­ter said. "Whilst we may not agree on is­sues, let us be up­per­most in our fo­cus on the rights of cit­i­zens of this coun­try...We must re­spect peo­ple's rights as cit­i­zens and all that comes with it." The Na­tion­al Gen­der Pol­i­cy will go be­fore Cab­i­net in June. St Rose-Greaves said there was a crit­i­cal is­sue of "back­street" abor­tions that need­ed to be ad­dressed from a pub­lic health per­spec­tive. She made it clear that she was not ad­vo­cat­ing abor­tion, but the right to choose.

Some of the key ar­eas of at­ten­tion iden­ti­fied in the pol­i­cy are:

• gen­der-based vi­o­lence and hu­man se­cu­ri­ty;

• health and well-be­ing;

• ed­u­ca­tion and lit­er­a­cy;

• pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion;

• labour and em­ploy­ment; and

• agri­cul­ture and food se­cu­ri­ty.

St Rose-Greaves al­so said there was an epi­dem­ic of gen­der-based vi­o­lence, quot­ing sta­tis­tics from the Po­lice Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch to sup­port her ob­ser­va­tions. Ac­cord­ing to the sta­tis­tics, homi­cides be­cause of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence were sec­ond on­ly to gang mur­ders. The draft pol­i­cy was de­vel­oped in con­junc­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies In­sti­tute for Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies.