Recent reports indicate that the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance, led by Minister Gail Teixeira, has launched yet another cohort of participants in its International Human Rights Law Certificate Programme, an initiative that has attracted hundreds of applicants eager to expand their understanding of human rights and governance.
While this continued training effort is commendable, it stands in sharp contradiction to the Government’s persistent failure to constitute the very constitutional body charged with safeguarding and promoting human rights in Guyana, the Human Rights Commission (HRC).
Under Article 212G of the Constitution of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, the Human Rights Commission must comprise the Chairpersons of the Women and Gender Equality Commission, the Indigenous Peoples’ Commission, the Rights of the Child Commission, and the Ethnic Relations Commission. These Chairpersons must then elect one of their number to serve as Chairperson of the HRC.
However, despite this clear constitutional obligation, successive administrations, including the present one, have failed to complete the appointment of all the rights commissions and, by extension, the Human Rights Commission itself.
This means that, more than two decades after the 2001 constitutional reforms that created the HRC, the body still does not exist in law or in practice.
It is therefore deeply inconsistent for the Ministry to celebrate human-rights training achievements while the institutional mechanism that is constitutionally mandated to monitor, report on, and address human-rights violations remains dormant.
Training individuals in human-rights awareness cannot substitute for the establishment of an independent, permanent commission empowered to act on violations and to hold state institutions accountable.
If the Government is truly committed to human-rights advancement, it must begin not with workshops and certificates, but with respect for the Constitution itself.
The Human Rights Commission represents the apex of Guyana’s rights architecture, bringing together the Rights of the Child, Indigenous Peoples’, Gender Equality, and Ethnic Relations Commissions, and ensuring coordination, oversight, and accountability.
Until that Commission is properly constituted and operational, Guyana’s human-rights framework will remain structurally incomplete, and public declarations of commitment will ring hollow.
The time has come for deeds, not symbolism.
Constitute the Human Rights Commission, as the Constitution demands, and as the people deserve.
Hon. Tabitha Sarabo-Halley, MP
