Human Rights Workshop Reviews Strategies to Address Constitutional Reform Exercise

Guyana has ratified a wide range of international and regional human rights Conventions. Moreover, Guyana boasts at least five ‘rights’ Commissions.  “Alongside these encouraging signs, however, exists a tendency for any attempt to raise human rights issues to attract abuse, threats and retaliation, thereby discouraging civic activism.” So said the  Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) in a release yesterday.

As a response to this situation civic organizations in Guyana benefitted last week from a three-day workshop supported by the UK Magna Carta Fund, through the good offices of the British High Commission. Led by the Brazil-based human rights expert Conor Foley, the workshop was   coordinated by GHRA. Trade unionists, activists in child, women, environment and indigenous rights, journalists and anti-corruption activists were exposed to techniques to improve the impact of their work in a situation of shrinking democratic space. In this respect the workshop lay in providing an opportunity for the agencies to look at themselves and their methods of operation rather than at particular problems.

Participants of the workshop analysed some well-known recent human rights cases such as the Mahdia tragedy and the rape case of an indigenous girl from the standpoint of the effectiveness of their Agencies’ response – what could have been done more effectively and what worked well.

The final day of the workshop addressed the upcoming Constitutional Reform Commission (CRC) as providing an opportunity for addressing rights-related issues in Guyana. Despite a narrow selection of the Commission members, this process represents an opportunity to address the two fundamental governance problems in Guyana: namely, the impasse in Parliament between govt and opposition parties and the breakdown between the civil and political sectors.

The major CRC of 1999-2000 saw a great deal of positive civic involvement, challenging the notion that civic engagement with politics is always a form of ‘naysaying’.  Members of the workshop were animated to learn that draft legislation on NGOs is in the works. The programme ended with a review of the strengths and pitfalls of social media as an advocacy tool.

GHRA said an underlying consideration motivating the workshop was the vital need to challenge the material accumulation-driven lifestyles of recent decades which are no longer viable in a world bound by 1.5c limits to global warming. To the end participants questioned “How we transition from a vision of material prosperity which has left two-thirds of the world in want and misery to a more fair and inclusive form of living?” From this perspective, human rights become an everyday matter, reinforcing compassion with the notion of entitlement of the excluded, rather than being remote legal concepts which are the preserve of lawyers.