Dear Editor,
In the past few weeks the ‘big’ issues of democracy have taken centre stage in Guyana and we like many other individuals and groups have signed onto petitions and statements on these matters. However, the unfortunate reality is that democracy, multi-party competitive elections, governments and political parties have failed to change our political, economic and social culture that is characterized by exclusion, inequality, denigration and exploitation of women and other vulnerable groups.
On the issue of sexual violence, while we have noted and accepted the apologies from the Guyana Police Force for the denigrating and uninformed comments made in relation to women’s dress and sexual violence, the violation and denial of the rights of women in Guyana as it relates to sexual violence continues unabated and has gotten worse.
As women we cannot remember a time in recent history when there was no law in place to protect women against rape and other forms of sexual assault. In 2014 Guyana, this is now our reality.
Even before the Chief Justice of Guyana, Mr Ian Chang quashed amended paper committals of the Sexual Offences Act 2010 (SOA) on November 19, 2014, the Attorney General of Guyana admitted that for the period 2011-2013 there were no convictions out of the 22 sexual offence cases which reached the courts. Incredibly, this signals that Guyana has gone backwards as in 2000-2004 and according to GHRA research only 1% of reported rapes resulted in convictions; today 10 years later Guyana has zero convictions for reported rapes.
While the AG blamed the archaic jury system as well as reluctant witnesses for the lack of rape and other sexual offences convictions we are of the opinion that it is the lack of implementation of the SOA 2010 and the failure of the state to put in place the necessary human, financial and material resources for its full functioning and the low priority, low consideration and low importance it gives to issues such as protection of human rights of women, children, youth and LGBT which has brought us to such a situation.
We have come to the conclusion that Guyanese citizens and in particular women, girl children, boy children, members of the LGBT community and marginalized and at risk youth have been deceived by a government that has:
- Appointed and defended an Attorney General on record for making crude and criminal sexual solicitation on behalf of a family member
Appointed a Chief Justice who has continued to give constitutional court rulings which fail to recognize the constitutional rights of survivors of rape and sexual assault,
- Allowed a Minister who has refused to convene or finance the multi-stakeholder sexual offence task force to do its work of coming up with an action plan for addressing sexual offences but who found money to pay a consultant to write the action plan for the task force demonstrating contempt for democratic, multi-stakeholder and meaningful collaboration;
- Dispensed enormous amounts of money on unworkable ventures which have not improved our lives, the lives of our children or made us safer from sexual and other forms of violence.
We are not going to take this! We are tired of paper rights. We are tired of being abused, violated and not being able to get justice. We are tired of lack of services, means to access services and poor services because money and resources are not given to improve such services. We are tired of being treated as third class citizens. We are tired of being ignored as our lives and the lives of our families grow more and more dangerous from all forms of violence including sexual violence. We are most of all tired of the hypocrisy, deception, lies, corruption, ignorance and ‘eye pass’. We are sick and tired of the wasteful and empty consultations and empty promises. We know the truth, and the truth is: in this dear land of Guyana, women and children pass for grass.
Well no more! We are not prepared to accept that there is no money for comprehensively addressing the scourge of sexual violence. These are our demands and what we intend to fight for:
- The removal of Mr Anil Nandlall as Attorney General for insulting all Guyanese women
- Disallow Chief Justice, Mr Ian Chang, from presiding over any matter dealing with sexual offences for his failure to show equal consideration for survivors of sexual offences. We further recommend that there be a panel of 3 judges to preside over constitutional cases.
- The establishment of adequately funded institutions at all levels of the social and criminal justice system armed with progressive human rights based policies to support and secure justice for victims of sexual violence including:
- Special sexual offence courts and appointment of special judges to deal with the backlog of sexual offence cases whenever the ruling of the Chief Justice is overturned and paper committals are re-instated
- A well- financed, autonomous secretariat for the multi-stakeholder sexual offence task force
- Specialized domestic and sexual violence units in hospitals or other health care facilities equipped with rape kits, trained nurses, counsellors, police officers and victim advocates so that survivors can receive all necessary professional services at one location
- Establishment of medical technologies so DNA evidence can be processed in a timely manner
- Nationwide educational programmes on prevention, protection and prosecution of sexual offences in collaboration with relevant NGOs, so that Guyanese citizens can be informed on the SOA 2012, rape culture and rape myths and take informed action
- Ongoing training by competent and expert trainers on SOA 2010 for police, court personnel, judiciary and magistracy including how rape culture and rape myths fuel attitudes and behaviours which contribute to high incidences of sexual violence
- An independent audit and evaluation of all past and present governmental programmes that address(ed) sexual violence to determine their effectiveness.
Yours faithfully,
Andaiye
Mellissa Ifill
Sherlina Nageer
Joy Marcus
Wintress White
Leila Jagdeo
Danuta Radzik