An open let­ter sup­port­ing Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Ver­na St Rose-Greaves has been signed by more than 30 rep­re­sen­ta­tives of re­gion­al non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions. The sig­na­to­ries rep­re­sent mem­bers of the re­cent­ly formed CatchAFyah Caribbean Fem­i­nist Net­work. The let­ter, pub­lished on their Web site on May 31, praised St Rose-Greaves for ad­vo­cat­ing a hu­man rights ap­proach to the na­tion­al di­a­logue on ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty and abor­tion.

"We are...pleased at your pub­lic show of sup­port for the sex­u­al and re­pro­duc­tive health and rights of women and the rights of the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty. We recog­nise the tremen­dous courage it takes to speak pub­licly on is­sues that are con­tro­ver­sial and that peo­ple would rather ig­nore."

The state­ment said St Rose-Greaves'com­ments demon­strat­ed "a com­mit­ment to the rights of mar­gin­alised groups that far out­weigh any po­ten­tial op­po­si­tion." At a stake­hold­er meet­ing on the draft na­tion­al gen­der pol­i­cy last month, St Rose-Greaves said dis­agree­ments on these is­sues had kept the gen­der pol­i­cy in po­lit­i­cal lim­bo.

CatchAFyah al­so sup­port­ed St Rose-Greaves' stance on child abuse. "We join you in con­demn­ing the lack of ad­e­quate re­sponse to all forms of child abuse and in par­tic­u­lar the sex­u­al abuse of Caribbean girls and boys. We lend our col­lec­tive voic­es to break­ing the si­lence on this is­sue and we pledge to work in our com­mu­ni­ties, na­tion­al­ly and re­gion­al­ly to en­sure that Caribbean chil­dren's right to life free of abuse is made re­al­i­ty."

Lo­cal or­gan­i­sa­tions that signed the let­ter in­clude the Sil­ver Lin­ing Foun­da­tion and the Free Pride Foun­da­tion Project. The let­ter has been signed by or­gan­i­sa­tions and in­di­vid­u­als from An­tigua, Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, Guyana, Ja­maica, St Lu­cia, St Kitts & Nevis, and St Vin­cent & the Grenadines.

CatchAFyah was found­ed in May af­ter a two-day con­fer­ence or­gan­ised by Tonya Haynes of Code Red for Gen­der Jus­tice in Bar­ba­dos. The net­work de­scribes it­self as a group of ac­tivists, artists, re­searchers and oth­er like-mind­ed peo­ple who "work for so­cial and eco­nom­ic jus­tice and em­pow­er­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly gen­der eq­ui­ty and women's rights."