The Gov­ern­ment is be­ing asked to step in to do more to pro­tect mem­bers of the LGBTQI+ com­mu­ni­ty.

The call was made by the CAISO Sex and Jus­tice Pro­gramme, as the world recog­nised the In­ter­na­tion­al Day Against Ho­mo­pho­bia, Bi­pho­bia, In­ter­sex­ism and Trans­pho­bia (IDA­HO­BIT) yes­ter­day.

CAISO di­rec­tor Dr An­gelique Nixon ex­pressed the view that not enough is be­ing done to make mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty feel safe and se­cure.

Dr Nixon said for this IDA­HO­BIT, her or­gan­i­sa­tion con­tin­ued its call for the Gov­ern­ment to meet its hu­man rights oblig­a­tion to be as in­clu­sive as pos­si­ble and pro­tect all peo­ple liv­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go from harm and dis­crim­i­na­tion.

“We raise these is­sues es­pe­cial­ly to­day be­cause there con­tin­ues to be a lack of pro­tec­tions af­ford­ed to LGBTQI+ peo­ple liv­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go and there are few av­enues for ac­ces­si­ble and mean­ing­ful re­dress,” she said.

She ex­plained that it is be­cause of the many is­sues fac­ing the com­mu­ni­ty that CAISO be­gan an ini­tia­tive called the Whole­ness and Jus­tice Pro­gramme in 2020. The pro­gramme, she ex­plained, was cre­at­ed to re­spond to vi­o­la­tions of hu­man rights.

At a vir­tu­al news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, CAISO de­liv­ered its key find­ings com­ing out of the pro­gramme from De­cem­ber 2020 to De­cem­ber 2021. For that pe­ri­od, there was an in­take of 33 peo­ple.

The group said it was recog­nised that there was a lot of hous­ing in­sta­bil­i­ty and a grow­ing need for safe hous­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly for young LGBTQI+ peo­ple.

Re­search and pro­gramme as­so­ciate Kel­log Nke­mako­lam ex­plained that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and as­so­ci­at­ed re­stric­tions would have high­light­ed the need for safe hous­es.

“Many peo­ple would have been con­fined to spaces, be it in their fam­i­ly or what­ev­er spaces that they in­hab­it, where they aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly wel­comed or where they aren’t ac­cept­ed and where they feel un­safe and be­cause of that, they would need hous­ing sup­port.”

How­ev­er, he added that CAISO does not have the abil­i­ty at this point to pro­vide hous­ing for mem­bers in need.

He called on the Gov­ern­ment to as­sist with this “be­cause per­sons have the right to safe hous­ing and that is a right that they should be able to en­joy re­gard­less of their sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion or any oth­er dis­tinc­tion that we have at­tached to peo­ple.”

Nke­mako­lam added that there is al­so a grow­ing need for fi­nan­cial and food as­sis­tance for peo­ple in the LGBTQI+ com­mu­ni­ty.

In a post to the so­cial me­dia site Twit­ter yes­ter­day, the group Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans for Glob­al ac­tion high­light­ed a quote by UNC Sen­a­tor Jow­elle de Souza.

In the post, de Souza called on gov­ern­ments in the Caribbean “to em­brace the LGBTQI+ com­mu­ni­ties and show them the re­spect they de­serve, not on­ly by tack­ling the LGBTQI+ ques­tions but al­so by in­clud­ing mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty in their ini­tia­tives.”

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