Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Sitara Bha­gi­rathee, Cherisse Lam­bert, and Ana-Lis­sa Jack are three le­gal pro­fes­sion­als pro­vid­ing ser­vice to the most vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties and peo­ple among us. Bha­gi­rathee is a le­gal of­fi­cer, while Lam­bert and Jack are two le­gal as­so­ciates. To­geth­er, they make up the le­gal team at the Caribbean Cen­tre for Hu­man Rights (CCHR).

For many peo­ple who are des­per­ate for help, these three ladies are a sym­bol of hope to­wards an un­cer­tain fu­ture. Found­ed in 2006, CCHR mon­i­tors hu­man rights is­sues and ad­vo­cates with gov­ern­ment stake­hold­ers for the hu­man rights of refugees, mi­grants, asy­lum seek­ers, pris­on­ers, those de­tained at the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre, as well as peo­ple who mere­ly need le­gal ad­vice in T&T and across the Caribbean. It even stretch­es to mat­ters of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, fam­i­ly is­sues, and le­gal re­search.

Their work has be­come even more crit­i­cal with an in­flux of Venezue­lan mi­grants over the last decade.

How­ev­er, Lam­bert said it was a mis­con­cep­tion that they on­ly as­sist Venezue­lan mi­grants.

She said, “The work is ex­treme­ly crit­i­cal and se­ri­ous. The vast ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple that make up and com­prise the vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ty are Venezue­lans, but it al­so sheds light on oth­er per­sons and oth­er na­tion­al­i­ties that are here, like Syr­i­an na­tion­als, Cubans, Haitians, Guyanese, peo­ple from Bangladesh, and the east­ern hemi­sphere.”

Lam­bert added that the work they do has al­so shed light on the lack of leg­is­la­tion in this coun­try to sup­port the vast mi­gra­tion of peo­ple to our twin-is­land state.

Be­yond the le­gal chal­lenges, these three ladies have to over­come lan­guage bar­ri­ers, un­der­stand do­mes­tic law, and ac­cess lo­cal pro­grammes.

Last year, this team made con­tact with 500 peo­ple, pro­vid­ing le­gal ad­vice to 496 peo­ple. Their out­reach cam­paigns meant to ed­u­cate vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties about their hu­man rights and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties reached over 700 peo­ple. They are the of­fi­cial part­ners of the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees, as­sist­ing peo­ple to get pro­tec­tion or­ders and teach­ing about their rights. Bha­gi­rathee said this was one of the most im­por­tant parts of their work.

She added, “It’s al­so im­por­tant for us to break the stig­ma. Peo­ple be­lieve that ed­u­ca­tion and aware­ness are for non-na­tion­als and those whose rights are be­ing in­fringed up­on, but we would like to ex­tend where the coun­try as a whole knows about the type of work be­ing done.” This ed­u­ca­tion and aware­ness that Bha­gi­rathee speaks of have be­come even more im­por­tant dur­ing the State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Jack ex­plained, “CCHR is con­tin­u­ous­ly mon­i­tor­ing the hu­man rights in­fringe­ments in this coun­try. We al­ready have a SoE com­mu­ni­ca­tion plan. In terms of the refugee and asy­lum-seek­er com­mu­ni­ty specif­i­cal­ly, they are afraid of the im­pact this could have on them be­cause even be­fore the SoE, there were peo­ple who would have been sub­ject­ed to il­le­gal search­es and abuse of pow­er.”

Bha­gi­rathee said she was con­cerned by the num­ber of peo­ple in this coun­try who do not know their right to an at­tor­ney. This has dri­ven her and her team to ex­pand their ed­u­ca­tion­al dri­ve.

She said, “We now want to ex­pand. We have done amaz­ing­ly well in terms of 2024. We are now em­bark­ing on bridg­ing that gap, whether it is lan­guage, stig­ma, or get­ting the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties and stake­hold­ers on board with us to ed­u­cate the asy­lum seek­ers and refugees in ad­di­tion to the cit­i­zens of T&T in terms of hu­man rights.”

The team isn’t con­cerned about whether the num­ber this year is big­ger or small­er than last year but rather about en­sur­ing that peo­ple’s rights are not in­fringed up­on. In their line of work, Bha­gi­rathee, Lam­bert, and Jack are ex­posed to some of the most des­per­ate cas­es they will deal with in their le­gal ca­reers. Some peo­ple are flee­ing war, con­flict, po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion, and gangs.

Their lives and on­ly hope rest with these three who are fight­ing for them to at least get a chance to stay and build a life in T&T. It’s al­so a job that could drain you emo­tion­al­ly and leave you fa­tigued.

Bha­gi­rathee told us what keeps her go­ing: “What I en­joy the most at CCHR is com­bin­ing my love for God, His peo­ple, and the law, and what keeps me ground­ed is the love poured in­to me by my grand­moth­er, the late Cha­nar­dai Samod­ee, and with God, any­thing is pos­si­ble, ac­cord­ing to Luke 1:37.”

For these three ladies, the le­gal pro­fes­sion is no longer a job. It has be­come their life’s pur­pose, us­ing it as a ve­hi­cle to help peo­ple who oth­er­wise would not be able to help them­selves.