Wes­ley Gib­bings

Hemi­spher­ic hu­man rights or­gan­i­sa­tions are fear­ful that what is viewed as Caribbean com­pla­cen­cy on civ­il lib­er­ties may con­tribute to the un­der­min­ing of the in­ter-Amer­i­can hu­man rights sys­tem through re­cent ini­tia­tives led by some mem­bers of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS).

The test will come at a spe­cial ses­sion of the OAS Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in March when mem­ber coun­tries de­cide on a process to re­form the hu­man rights sys­tem through ad­just­ments to the pow­ers and in­flu­ence of the In­ter-Amer­i­can Com­mis­sion on Hu­man Rights (IACHR) and the In­ter-Amer­i­can Court on Hu­man Rights.

The mea­sures are be­ing cham­pi­oned by Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil and sev­er­al oth­er Latin Amer­i­can states. They in­clude lim­its on "pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures," re-al­lo­ca­tion of fi­nanc­ing, greater ac­cent on the "pro­mo­tion" of hu­man rights and changes in re­port­ing mech­a­nisms for the Com­mis­sion. For­eign min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an is as­sert­ing that T&T will sup­port all mea­sures to "strength­en" the Com­mis­sion.

"We be­lieve," he told Sun­day Guardian, "that the Com­mis­sion should be strength­ened and there are cer­tain as­pects of the op­er­a­tions of the Com­mis­sion that re­quire some more teeth." How­ev­er, some an­a­lysts ar­gue that the pro­pos­als will in fact weak­en the Com­mis­sion and un­der­mine the role of its Spe­cial Rap­por­teur for Free­dom of Ex­pres­sion. They be­lieve a unit­ed Caribbean re­sponse can avert the worst dan­gers.

The OAS Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) cau­cus com­pris­es a po­ten­tial­ly in­flu­en­tial 14 of the or­gan­i­sa­tion's 35 mem­ber states. On­ly six Cari­com coun­tries are how­ev­er sig­na­to­ries to the Amer­i­can Con­ven­tion on Hu­man Rights and on­ly three (Bar­ba­dos, Haiti and Suri­name) have ac­ced­ed to the com­pul­so­ry ju­ris­dic­tion of the In­ter-Amer­i­can Court on Hu­man Rights.

T&T was an ear­ly sig­na­to­ry to the Con­ven­tion in 1977 but an­nounced its de­nun­ci­a­tion of the Con­ven­tion in 1998 which, with one year's no­tice, saw the coun­try's de­par­ture in 1999. This, to­geth­er with a reser­va­tion reg­is­tered un­der the Unit­ed Na­tions Op­tion­al Pro­to­col to the In­ter­na­tion­al Covenant on Civ­il and Po­lit­i­cal Rights, made way for the prompt ex­e­cu­tion of the Dole Chadee gang in June 1999.

The coun­try, how­ev­er, still falls un­der the scruti­ny of the IACHR which has a man­date to re­ceive, analyse and in­ves­ti­gate in­di­vid­ual hu­man rights pe­ti­tions from all OAS mem­ber states.

Hu­man rights ad­vo­cates in the USA, Cana­da, Latin Amer­i­ca, and to a much less­er ex­tent, the Caribbean, are con­cerned that spe­cif­ic pro­pos­als to lim­it the abil­i­ty of the Com­mis­sion to act in­de­pen­dent­ly to im­pose le­gal "pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures" to pro­tect per­sons may sig­nif­i­cant­ly un­der­mine its cred­i­bil­i­ty.

They al­so be­lieve changes to the manda­to­ry pro­cess­ing times for cas­es, ad­just­ments to re­port­ing mech­a­nisms for or­gans of the Com­mis­sion and a greater em­pha­sis on the "pro­mo­tion" of hu­man rights as op­posed to af­ford­ing pro­tec­tion will have the im­pact of wa­ter­ing down its in­flu­ence.

So far, Caribbean in­ter­ven­tions on the is­sues have been rel­a­tive­ly mut­ed. But, in a sub­mis­sion to the OAS Per­ma­nent Coun­cil in No­vem­ber, Ja­maica 's am­bas­sador to the OAS Prof Stephen Va­sci­enne ad­mit­ted that Cari­com states be­lieved through the work of the Privy Coun­cil and the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice "our hu­man rights is­sues are al­ready prop­er­ly ad­dressed."

He al­so point­ed to the vex­ing is­sue of low Caribbean vis­i­bil­i­ty with­in the In­ter-Amer­i­can sys­tem. There are two Cari­com na­tion­als on the sev­en-mem­ber Com­mis­sion Vice Chair Tra­cy Robin­son of Ja­maica and Prof Rose-Marie Belle An­toine of T&T, and just one full-time Cari­com lawyer on staff.

"If the Com­mis­sion wish­es to en­cour­age a stronger feel­ing of own­er­ship among Cari­com states, it can­not ig­nore the avail­abil­i­ty of na­tion­als from these states for ser­vice in the Com­mis­sion," Va­sci­enne said. How­ev­er, civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions ad­dress­ing the OAS Per­ma­nent Coun­cil on De­cem­ber 7 be­lieved the fo­cus should be on en­sur­ing greater lev­els of aware­ness on the part of all mem­ber coun­tries about the se­ri­ous­ness of the pro­posed mea­sures.

The As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Me­dia Work­ers (ACM) was the on­ly Cari­com civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tion in at­ten­dance and ar­gued that, among oth­er things, the Of­fice of the Spe­cial Rap­por­teur for Free­dom of Ex­pres­sion faced spe­cial risks, should the re­forms be en­act­ed. Dook­er­an said T&T will sup­port "all mea­sures to pro­tect free­dom of the press (but) we be­lieve that the process for deal­ing with hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions must be able to stand up to scruti­ny."

Civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions gath­ered in Wash­ing­ton DC in De­cem­ber, how­ev­er, sug­gest­ed in their pre­sen­ta­tions that the "scruti­ny" be­ing pre­scribed by some states is a eu­phemism for greater state con­trol of the sys­tem and may spell dan­ger for the 53-year-old com­mis­sion and its work. The March meet­ing promis­es to de­liv­er a sig­nif­i­cant ver­dict on the is­sue.