-GHRA
The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) says that Guyana’s report to the UN Human Rights Council did not benefit from consultations and is contemptuous of the council and civil society here.
The first Report from Guyana under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) was considered on Tuesday by the UN Human Rights Council at its current session in Geneva. Yesterday, the GHRA, in a strongly worded statement said that the Guyana Report reflects contempt for both the Human Rights Council and for Guyanese civil society.
It pointed to Human Rights Council Resolution 5/1 of June 2007 which says “States are encouraged to prepare the information they submit through a broad consultation process at the national level with all relevant stake-holders”. The GHRA also pointed to Guyana’s response:
“Guyana believes that consultation is an on-going process as opposed to one-off occasional events. Guyana therefore respectfully submits that consultation has been on-going on the key and critical issues that have been reported on in this report. There is no policy, programme nor issue of national importance that has not been subjected to review by Cabinet, national stakeholders, communities, non-governmental bodies, civil society, the media and/or parliamentarians at various stages of the consultative process. The information provided herein is in keeping with the General Principles and Guidelines for the preparation of information under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR).”
The GHRA said it considers Guyana’s statement to be “specious, self-serving and substantively untrue.” It explained that “not only has the process of preparation of this Report been highly secretive, the society has, never at any time, witnessed impartial consultations on extra-judicial executions, torture, discrimination, or a range of other human rights issues raised by civil society and the political opposition parties”.
The human rights organisation said that in this respect, the Report is less participatory than any human rights report submitted to the UN since 1992. Reports since that date, excluding the present one, used to benefit from dialogue with an inter-Agency Committee under the aegis of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which included civil society. The Guyana Human Rights Association was an active member of that Committee. The recent Report ought to have been available on the UN Human Rights Committee website since at least last November. However, the GHRA was only able to obtain a copy recently, it said.
Alluding to the UPR process, the organisation pointed out that all member States are obliged to report on progress made to implement human rights Conventions that it has ratified. The UPR process is intended to improve on the many defects of the previous system in which States reported separately on each Convention ratified.
The new system, it must be recognized, is friendly to the point of being obsequious towards reporting States, in an effort to encourage genuine dialogue, the GHRA said.
Denouncing violations has been virtually extinguished from the process as the price for dialogue, it said, adding that despite these favourable circumstances, the Guyana Report reflects contempt for both the Human Rights Council and for Guyanese civil society.
According to the GHRA, the main casualty of not having benefitted from consultation is the avoidance in the Guyana Report of any information which suggests weakness, failure, unresolved issues or challenges of a human rights nature in Guyana. “The Report frequently harks back to the pre-1992 period before the present Government took office despite the UPR provision that it should primarily focus on the more recent past. The reader is frequently misled to believe that reforms, to the 1980 Constitution, agreed but not implemented, such as reform of the electoral system and the rights commissions have in fact been activated”, it said.
“As an instrument for strengthening protection of human rights in Guyana, therefore, the document is of no value”, the GHRA contended.
The government has not circulated the report submitted to the UN nor has it commented on its appearance before the human rights council on Tuesday.
