Stabroek News GHRA celebrates 30 years of safeguarding rights

The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) says its commitment to impartiality and accuracy of information has informed its work over 30 years.

In a press release the GHRA said it established as its hallmark, a determination to protect the rights of individual citizens against abuses by officialdom, whether planned or fortuitous, which continues to influence its activism. “Reaching 30 years of age (on October 17) as a civil society institution is an achievement a wide range of persons both in and out of Guyana should identify with and celebrate since its development has been the work of many hands,” it said.

The GHRA has been able to operate on a modest budget because it has always benefited from the generous volunteer spirit of many people and with the solidarity of a wide range of individuals, business religious and charitable organisations, it said. Case-based protection activities anchors its human rights activism and, it has handled cases such as abuses suffered within the framework of the administration of justice, torture, police brutality, extra judicial execution, corrupt magistrates, judges, prosecutors, and attorneys, unacceptable delays and extortionate fees.

Other areas of concern featured regularly in the GHRA reports relate to abuse of the media and freedom of expression, access to National Insurance Scheme benefits, the absence of services to address mental illness, sexual violence against young women and girls and the elderly, land/health and identity rights of Amerindian peoples and rights abuses suffered by people living with HIV/AIDS. Over the years, it has engaged in electoral reform, election monitoring, constitutional reform, reform of laws relating to disabilities, indigenous people, forestry and mining, prison reform, termination of pregnancy, broadcast legislation and national policies relating to HIV/AIDS.

In the late 1990’s the GHRA established human rights education in the schools curriculum and recognised and underscored the specific rights related to the identity of women and children, a process which progressively expanded to identify rights of indigenous people, people with disabilities and, more contemporaneously, issues of sexual orientation.

In 1998, the Guyana Human Rights Centre was built which provided a more permanent home after almost twenty years of being housed in a number of dilapidated dwellings. The release said that in an era where Guyanese activism is overly dependent on external funding; it remains a source of much satisfaction that the Centre was built from funds raised by the current and past membership who continue to contribute to its maintenance.

According to the release the Association was founded in 1979 by a group of individuals drawn predominantly from professional labour and religious backgrounds. It was created out of concerns which arose from the dictatorial powers accumulated by the then Prime Minister Forbes Burnham. One year earlier, an infamous referendum approved replacing the Independence Constitution (by a voter turn-out of 14%) for one better suited to the prevailing dictatorial realities.

From the beginning the GHRA’s work was influenced by the pioneering human rights activism developed during that period in Latin America where military dictatorships prevailed. The body has since benefited from internships, methodologies and philosophy which shaped that movement with, notably, the imperative that it be politically independent. Along with this, the credibility of human rights activism rests on the twin pillars of impartiality and accuracy of information, it said.