The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has opened a historic meeting in Bridgetown, with Barbados cautioning the hemispheric institution that it is not its final adjudicator on human rights matters.
Addressing a gathering of about 100 people in the Supreme Court Complex yesterday evening, Attorney General Adriel Brathwaite said there were concerns that the court saw itself as being above the Barbados Constitution and the jurisdiction of the Caribbean Court of Justice, the island’s highest Court of Appeal.
He pointed to a number of cases where the court had found Barbados in breach of the human rights of its citizens, for instance, in relation to the death penalty (Boyce et al. vs Barbados, Tyrone DaCosta Cadogan vs Barbados) and the right to a fair trial.
“The court in these decisions seems to have accepted that the final determination of human rights issues under the constitution reposed in itself,” he said in the formal opening of the 44th Extraordinary Period of Sessions of the court.
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