THE FACULTY OF LAW at the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) has started a rights advocacy project to use the court and other tools to promote the cause of Caribbean people whose rights are infringed.
There will be a specific focus on the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, Chancellor at the UWI Sir George Alleyne disclosed on Saturday.
“The faculty of law . . . has formed the rights advocacy project and the main objective of that project is to promote human rights and social justice in the Caribbean, through pivotal public interest litigation and related activities of legal and social science research on the situation relating to human rights in the Caribbean and public education,” he said as he addressed the Cave Hill Campus’ 2013 class at the morning graduation ceremony at the Garfield Sobers Sports Complex.
“As I understand it, two of their major efforts are in relation to the denial of human rights to a specific minority – the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community.”
Sir George pointed out that activists have complained that scholarship and practice need to come together more closely in the university’s programmes.
He said they have argued that “the teaching and the discourse around moral, philosophical and constitutional niceties do not relate to the daily infringements suffered by minorities in our societies”.
The chancellor said he was therefore pleased with the effort by the Faculty of Law to advance human rights in the Caribbean through melding teaching with practice.
Sir George had earlier in his address expressed concern about the “negation of human rights of a specific minority in our Caribbean societies”.
He and Professor Rose-Marie Belle Antoine have published a book entitled HIV And Human Rights, which came out of a symposium held a few years ago which Sir George said highlighted the degree of stigma and discrimination against persons living with HIV/AIDS and minorities such as homosexuals.
The former United Nations Secretary General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean said the presence of laws that criminalize consensual homosexual sex in private was “a clear indication of the disjuncture between the criminal codes and the principles of respect for human dignity and essential freedoms that are enshrined and engraved in the Caribbean constitutions”.
He said such legislation were relics of British laws dating back to 1876, laws which he noted Britain had long repealed.
“Of course parliaments, if so inclined, could amend or repeal these laws. However, given the difficulty of parliamentary action, the only recourse for change is through litigation,” Sir George added.
He said, noting that while it was sometimes suggested that laws posed no problem because they were not enforced, they did contribute to the stigma and discrimination suffered by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons.
“Not only is such stigma and discrimination inimical to public health efforts to prevent and control HIV/AIDS, but they affront the basic rights which are enshrined in the constitutions of our countries,” he added.
(DP)