GUYANA government’s commitment to the respect for human rights is unequivocal, absolute, and evident.

Presently, Guyana is hosting an unprecedented meeting and workshop in Georgetown, opened by Prime Minster Moses Nagamootoo, to discuss ways to improve and maximise relations with the Geneva-based Human Rights Council (HRC). The HRC is the arm of the United Nations that responds to global human rights issues. Government’s attention to human rights and the recognition that such rights are important is to be commended, even as many other countries’ neglect of those rights is condemned.

The workshop – organised by the Government of Guyana, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat, the Trust Fund to Support the Participation of Least Developed Countries (LDCs), and the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) – marks the first time that a president of the HRC, in this case Mr. Vojislav Suc, has ever visited the region. Government representatives from across the Caribbean, including some forty local participants, are interacting and discussing how our region can better engage with the HRC. Guyana’s participants include senior government officials.

The workshop, being held on the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR), offers an ideal opportunity for CARICOM States to reaffirm our commitment to the provisions of the UDHR, while strengthening administrative structures for the enforcement of those rights.

Human rights are moral principles that describe standard behaviour that protect the inalienable, fundamental rights to which a person is entitled by virtue of being human. Those moral principles arose out of ideas developed after the Second World War, particularly in light of the Holocaust. Those principles were clarified and resulted in the adoption of the UDHR by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948.

Such rights are set out in the articles of the UDHR. Article 1 states, “All humans are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

The UDHR enshrines too, the rights to equality, dignity, liberty, security, privacy, and citizenship, among others. The UDHR lists too, additional freedoms and entitlements. The document affirms that humans are entitled to freedom of religion, association, free and fair trials under the law, and freedom from enslavement or involuntary servitude. The workshop, therefore, is evidently important.

Human rights and freedoms are enshrined in numerous articles throughout Guyana’s constitution. Article 40 (1) states, “Every person in Guyana is entitled to the basic right to a happy, creative and productive life, free from hunger, disease, ignorance, and want. That right includes the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual, that is to say, the right, whatever his race, place of origin, political opinions, colour, creed or sex, but subject to the respect for rights and freedoms of others and for the public interest, to each and all of the following, namely –
(a) Life, liberty, security of the person and the protection of the law;
(b) Freedom of conscience, of expression and of assembly and association; and
(c) Protection for the privacy of his home and other property and from deprivation of property without compensation.”

In addition to the fundamental rights to which all humans are entitled, Guyanese enjoy many other constitutional rights and entitlements. For example, the right to free education (Article 27), and the right to free medical attention (Article 24). It is in the interest of all Guyanese to know their rights under the law.

The Guyana government, by hosting the two-day, international workshop, reaffirms its guarantee to the upholding of human rights in Guyana, and iterates is commitment to working towards fortifying the administrative and legal arrangements that give reality to the respect for such rights in all territories. The leadership demonstrated by Guyana’s government by hosting this workshop is, again, noted and applauded.