WASH­ING­TON—The Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) says Trinida­di­an Ro­nia Swan was the on­ly per­son from the Caribbean to win the Youth Es­say Con­test on hu­man rights.

The win­ners read their es­says vir­tu­al­ly dur­ing a broad­cast from the Hall of the Amer­i­c­as at the OAS head­quar­ters here.

Swan’s es­say was on “Ad­vanc­ing Hu­man Rights for Women and Girls in Trinidad & To­ba­go”.

The oth­er win­ners were from Ar­genti­na, Colom­bia, Ecuador and Mex­i­co.

The OAS said it or­gan­ised the con­test in co­or­di­na­tion with the Per­ma­nent Mis­sions of Ar­genti­na, Bo­livia, Brazil, Chile, Colom­bia, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Mex­i­co, Pana­ma, Pe­ru, Unit­ed States and Uruguay “to en­gage youth in de­scrib­ing the every­day im­pact of in­ter­na­tion­al in­stru­ments on ad­vanc­ing and pro­mot­ing hu­man rights.”

The es­says cov­ered free­dom of ex­pres­sion and as­sem­bly; rights of per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties; rights of women and girls; rights of LGBTQI+; in­dige­nous peo­ples; sex­u­al and re­pro­duc­tive health; afro-de­scen­dants; rights of mi­grants; and rights of old­er per­sons.

A to­tal of 75 en­tries were re­ceived from 15 coun­tries. An in­ter­na­tion­al pan­el—com­posed of rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the OAS Sec­re­tari­at of Ac­cess to Rights and Eq­ui­ty and OAS Per­ma­nent Mis­sions of Cana­da and the Unit­ed States—judged the en­tries for rel­e­vance to the spe­cif­ic top­ics and nov­el ap­proach­es to prob­lem-solv­ing. The oth­er win­ners were: An­tonel­la Perez and Car­la Za­p­a­ta (Ar­genti­na); Jen­ny del Mar Lozano Mos­quera (Colom­bia); Yairy Ve­ga Mue­nala (Ecuador); and Rosario Edith Men­doza (Mex­i­co).

The Es­say Con­test was part of its ex­ten­sive ef­forts to en­gage youth in sup­port of Hu­man Rights Day, and to en­cour­age their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the for­mu­la­tion of ideas and rec­om­men­da­tions re­gard­ing peo­ple in sit­u­a­tions of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in the Amer­i­c­as, in­clud­ing the Caribbean.

Oth­er key re­gion­al ac­tors that pro­mote the hu­man rights of young peo­ple, as high­light­ed in ma­te­ri­als dis­played at the OAS main build­ing, in­clud­ed the Young Amer­i­c­as Busi­ness Trust (YABT); the Pan Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Foun­da­tion (PADF); the In­ter-Amer­i­can In­sti­tute of the Child (IIN; and the US State De­part­ment, through the Young Lead­ers of the Amer­i­c­as Ini­tia­tive (YLAI).