Guyana will soon begin national consultations on decriminalizing homosexuality, as a follow-up to discussions at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), in Perth, Australia last October.
“We are going to have those consultations. Due to the busy nature of everyone during the elections period, none was done but they will begin. I will consult with Gail Teixeira, Presidential Advisor on Governance, to set a plan and soon after they will begin, soon,” Minister of Foreign Affairs Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkette told Stabroek News after a news conference yesterday at the ministry, where she highlighted some of the major achievements of 2011 and outlined plans for this year.
The recommendation to repeal anti-gay laws was made by a Commonwealth advisory group and is intended to address HIV-infection rates in Commonwealth countries, which are double the figures in non-Commonwealth countries. Guyana and other former British colonies in the Caribbean still criminalise gay sex, although Britain has repealed its laws.
Asked if government was afraid to begin consultations for fear of a backlash from the religious community and if she felt the previous administration had failed the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community by not fulfilling a prior commitment to do so, Rodrigues-Birkette replied, “I do not know… I cannot say.”
In September 2009, the government committed at the Universal Periodic Review at the United Nations, in Geneva, to hold consultations within two years on current laws which discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. Teixeira had noted the “extreme pressure” the religious community placed on government during a past attempt to introduce a gay rights bill.
In May last year, the then British High Commissioner to Guyana Simon Bond urged the government to act on promised consultations. “Sometimes that means governments need to lead their people, not simply to follow public opinion,” he said in an address on the occasion of the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. Bond emphasised that human rights are universal and cannot be subject to different interpretations of morality, while noting that homosexuality remains illegal in around 80 countries, and is punishable by death in some states.
He acknowledged the legacy of British colonial laws prohibiting homosexual acts, which have not been changed in many countries, including 43 Commonwealth countries still criminalise homosexual behaviour. “…We clearly have some historical responsibility for the legislation that countries like Guyana inherited at independence,” he conceded.
