Renu­ka Singh

There is no law in T&T pro­tect­ing chil­dren from cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment at home or at school.Though for­mer pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards ini­tial­ly as­sent­ed to the Chil­dren Act–which pro­hibits the beat­ing of chil­dren–on Au­gust 6, 2012, it has nev­er been pro­claimed.The Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, in a brief tele­phone in­ter­view Fri­day, chart­ed the se­quence of events that took the as­sent­ed act out of the Pres­i­dent's Of­fice be­fore it could be pro­claimed in­to law.

"Af­ter it was as­sent­ed to, it went back to Par­lia­ment and I un­der­stand that the Child Pro­tec­tion Task Force had been set up and rec­om­mend­ed that procla­ma­tion wait un­til the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty was ful­ly func­tion­ing," the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent said."That is as far as it has reached," the of­fice said."The act has not come back to the Pres­i­dent's of­fice for procla­ma­tion."That task force was set up by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in De­cem­ber 2013.

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawarence Ma­haraj, in a brief tele­phone in­ter­view on Fri­day, said the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the fail­ure to pro­claim lay with the Cab­i­net, but added that no one can be ar­rest­ed or charged for ad­min­is­ter­ing cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment as that law does not yet ex­ist."The Cab­i­net has to ad­vise the Pres­i­dent when he could pro­claim it in­to law. It is a fail­ure of the Ex­ec­u­tive Arm of the Gov­ern­ment that is pre­vent­ing this act from com­ing in­to force," Ma­haraj said.

The is­sue of cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment once again gripped the pub­lic's at­ten­tion af­ter a record­ing of a moth­er, He­len Bartlett, re­peat­ed­ly hit­ting her 12-year-old daugh­ter with a belt, was post­ed on­line and went vi­ral.While the de­bate on cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment con­tin­ues to rage on the so­cial net­work­ing sites and with­in pri­vate homes, there is no law to fine, charge or ar­rest some­one for beat­ing a child.As the cur­rent le­gal­i­ty stands, though, cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment is law­ful in the home.

Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty­can't be reached

Sev­er­al at­tempts to con­tact the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty on Fri­day proved fu­tile, but in a press re­lease dat­ed No­vem­ber 22, 2013, the au­thor­i­ty con­firmed that "the Chil­dren Act 2012 has been as­sent­ed to and is yet to be pro­claimed to make it ef­fec­tive law."The Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty Act will be pro­claimed once the ba­sic ad­min­is­tra­tive, phys­i­cal and tech­ni­cal in­fra­struc­ture is in place–such as places of safe­ty, as­sess­ment cen­tres, and a crit­i­cal mass of staff to op­er­a­tionalise the au­thor­i­ty.

"We are in the fi­nal stages of the prepara­to­ry work re­quired for start-up and have been en­gag­ing key stake­hold­ers to pro­vide a more ef­fec­tive re­sponse to chil­dren at risk."As we build ca­pac­i­ty with­in the au­thor­i­ty, a key ini­tia­tive will in­volve de­liv­er­ing sup­port to fam­i­lies so that they can pro­vide a pro­tec­tive and nur­tur­ing en­vi­ron­ment for their chil­dren" the re­lease stat­ed.

Flog­ging still le­gal in T&T–UN Glob­al Re­port

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions 2013 Glob­al Ini­tia­tive to End All Cor­po­ral Pun­ish­ment of Chil­dren, T&T is list­ed among the 24 states where the laws do not ful­ly pro­hib­it cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment in any set­ting. T&T is list­ed among na­tions like Pak­istan, Pales­tine, In­dia, So­ma­lia, Tan­za­nia and Zim­bab­we.

T&T is al­so list­ed among the 39 states, where cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment–can­ing, flog­ging, whip­ping–is still a law­ful crim­i­nal sen­tence. Again, T&T is list­ed among na­tions like Iran, Sau­di Ara­bia, Brunei Darus­salam, Afghanistan, Pak­istan and Ton­ga.

The re­port fur­ther states that be­tween 2005 and 2011, UNICEF col­lect­ed sta­tis­tics on vi­o­lent pun­ish­ment of chil­dren in 49 low-and-mid­dle-in­come coun­tries. The re­sults show that in near­ly all coun­tries over 60 per cent of two- to 14-year-olds had ex­pe­ri­enced vi­o­lent pun­ish­ment–phys­i­cal pun­ish­ment and/or psy­cho­log­i­cal ag­gres­sion–in the home in the month pri­or to the sur­vey.T&T once again fea­tures among the 15 coun­tries in which 70-79 per cent of the young pop­u­la­tion was sub­ject­ed to vi­o­lence.

St Rose-Greaves:I'm not speak­ing about that right now...con­tact Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty

The Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed for­mer min­is­ter of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment Ver­na St Rose-Greaves re­gard­ing the un­en­forced act, but was told that she "was not speak­ing about that right now."St Rose Greaves then di­rect­ed the Sun­day Guardian to con­tact the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty.The Sun­day Guardian was then told that the "per­son to speak with" was not at the of­fice and was ad­vised to call back af­ter an hour. How­ev­er, there was no re­sponse to five sub­se­quent phone calls.

The Chil­dren Act

The UN re­port not­ed that while the Chil­dren Act (2012) was as­sent­ed to in Au­gust 2012 it is still await­ing procla­ma­tion.It not­ed that though Ar­ti­cle 4 pun­ish­es cru­el­ty to chil­dren, there is a caveat in sub­sec­tion 6: "Noth­ing in this sec­tion shall be con­strued as af­fect­ing the right of any par­ent, teacher or oth­er per­son hav­ing the law­ful con­trol or charge of a child to ad­min­is­ter rea­son­able pun­ish­ment to such child."

Sub­sec­tion 7 im­plic­it­ly con­firms that this al­lows par­ents to use cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment: "Rea­son­able pun­ish­ment re­ferred to in sub­sec­tion (6) in re­la­tion to any per­son oth­er than a par­ent or guardian, shall not in­clude cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment."Cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment of chil­dren is still law­ful in pub­lic and pri­vate schools un­der sec­tion 22 of the Chil­dren Act. Again, while it is pro­hib­it­ed in the Chil­dren (Amend­ment) Act 2000, the act has not yet come in­to force.

Mean­while, the stand­ing Ed­u­ca­tion Act (1996) makes no ref­er­ence to cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment but is con­tra­dict­ed by the the Na­tion­al School Code of Con­duct (2009) of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion which states that cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment should not be used.

Ac­cord­ing to the Chil­dren's Act, Sec­tion 3 (1) "If any per­son over the age of six­teen years, who has the cus­tody, charge, or care of any child or young per­son, will­ful­ly as­saults, ill-treats, ne­glects, aban­dons, or ex­pos­es the child or young per­son, or caus­es or pro­cures the child or young per­son to be as­sault­ed, ill-treat­ed, ne­glect­ed, aban­doned or ex­posed, in a man­ner like­ly to cause the child or young per­son un­nec­es­sary suf­fer­ing or in­jury to his health (in­clud­ing in­jury to or loss of sight, or hear­ing, or limb, or or­gan of the body, and any men­tal de­range­ment) that per­son is li­able of con­vic­tion on in­dict­ment, to a fine of four thou­sand dol­lars, or al­ter­na­tive­ly, or in de­fault of pay­ment of such fine, or in ad­di­tion there­to, to im­pris­on­ment for two years; and on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion, to a fine of one thou­sand dol­lars, or al­ter­na­tive­ly, or in ad­di­tion there­to, to im­pris­on­ment for six months."