INTERNATIONAL Human Rights Day 2017 finds Guyana still without a Commission on Human Rights. It is evident that the substantial section of the population seeking reform of our ramshackle and decrepit political structures seems likely to remain disappointed. A more promising prospect than a formal constitutional reform process might be creation of a civic-driven constitutional reform movement to elaborate the needed reforms and subsequently to seek political party endorsement of them. A high priority among such reforms would be the re-formulation of the entire section dealing with the ‘rights’ Commissions.

Contrary to popular opinion, the mechanisms misleadingly known as ‘rights’ Commissions produced by the constitutional reform process of 1999-2000 possess neither the mandate, competence nor powers essential to any bona fide rights mechanism. Of  fourteen (14) ”functions” listed for the Women and Gender Rights Commission, only one refers to

women’s rights and only one of the nine in the case of the Indigenous Peoples Commission.
Moreover, their capacity to advance the cause of human rights is hamstrung by byzantine inter-locking structures and no powers of enforcement. Heads of thematic rights Commissions, — Women & Gender, Children’s Rights, Indigenous Peoples and Ethnic Relations — despite not being elected by reference to their interest or track-record as human rights defenders, constitute the proposed membership of the Human Rights Commission. It is difficult to see how a credible Human Rights Commission could emerge from theses dysfunctional and convoluted arrangements.

Like many of the more progressive recommendations that emerged from the Constitutional Reform Commission of 1999-2000,  the ‘Rights Commissions’ were diminished and distorted by the subsequent Parliamentary Oversight Committee.

The confused thinking reflected in the mechanisms themselves seems also to have infected the numbering system adopted for the rights Section of the Constitution, all captured under one Section, 212,with sub-sections that run from 212 “A” through the entire alphabet to 212 “Z”, then on to “AA,” “BB” et, over 30 pages.
Nothing was done to implement this daunting section of the Constitution until a Presidential ‘Stakeholder ‘ consultation took place in 2008, aimed at securing civic support for a large-scale security programme.

As a ‘quid pro quo’ for civic support, the government agreed to implement the rights Commissions. Following that consultation, a separate civic process generated a Submission to the Appointive Committee of Parliament endorsed by over 60 organisations, setting out the modifications demanded by civil society to the rights Commissions prior to their implementation. These recommendations were neither acknowledged nor acted upon.

In 2009, the Rights Commissions were activated under a process devised by the Parliament Office, which  saw a wide range of organisations without any clear criteria as to eligibility invited to nominate members of the Commissions. We do not wish to suggest that the Parliament Office did not strive to be fair and inclusive, but it was clearly unfamiliar with and ill-equipped to undertake the task it was mandated to complete.

The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) strongly recommends that the Parliament Office suspend the current process of re-populating the ‘rights’ Commissions until an impartial review of their performance over the past seven years has been undertaken. The GHRA equally strongly re-iterates its opposition to any attempt to create a Guyana Human Rights Commission on the basis of the current bizarre formula embodied in Article 212.
The civic consultation process referred to earlier represented the kind of constitutional reform movement that appears to be needed at the present time.  The end result of such a process would hopefully be a Human rights Commission reflective of the needs, capacities and resources to advance human rights in Guyana. To encourage such thinking, the GHRA is offering to make the Submission to Parliament and list of endorsing organisations better known by making them available upon e-mail requests to ghraguy@gmail.com. The Submission was entitled Forum on Effectiveness & Solidarity (FES) Submission  to (1) the Appointive Committee of Parliament and (2) the Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional Reform on Implementation of Stakeholder Recommendations  June 2008.
Yours sincerely,
GHRA Executive Committee