This is the eighth entry in a series on the current state of civil society in Guyana
Every year the Women and Gender Equality Commission (WGEC) submits substantial reports to Parliament with recommendations which are laid in the National Assembly but have never been debated or considered, according to WGEC commissioner Vanda Radzik.
“We hand them over to the Speaker of the House. Our reports are therefore laid in the Parliament. We have never known, to the best of our knowledge, that they have come to the floor to be debated. It is expected that the reports, once laid, would be debated and some of the recommendations taken up, agreed on, legislated or be made implementable. It hasn’t happened as yet and every year we do these reports,” she said.
“This is the kind of anomaly about Guyana. We have these institutions, approved and appointed by the Parliament and yet members of parliament (MPs) pay scant attention or no attention to the annual reports. We think it is unconstitutional for that to happen to a constitutional rights commission.”
A founder-member of the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Red Thread, Radzik said she was part of the formation of some of the NGOs and civil society organisations which today are a sign of the excellence and resilience of Guyanese to continue with the work they do.
The WGEC, which comprises representatives of women’s civil society organisations and others that includes the LGBTIQ+ community, works with a five-year strategic plan.
While the WGEC and other rights commission emerged from the last constitutional reform process, some two decades ago, Radzik lamented that the crucial Human Rights Commission (HRC) has not yet been established.
“There is no reason why it cannot be established. A Human Rights Secretariat has been set up but I don’t know what they are doing because there is no HRC. The HRC is the overarching commission for all of the four rights commission, the WGEC, Indigenous Peoples Commission, Rights of the Child Commission and Ethnic Relations Commission.”
Calling for the HRC to be established, she said, without an overarching HRC, all of the commissions are lesser than their purpose, vision and goals should be, because they lack the overarching commission which has significant powers.
Encouraging honest and rights-based people who will have the people’s interest at heart to get into the Parliament to change the political culture from the inside, she said, “the brawling, fighting and kind of immature behaviour that goes on in the highest decision making forum in Guyana, is … infantile and very foolish altogether. Parliament needs a lot more people who are, fundamentally, the protectors and defenders of Guyanese rights and not just the party boys and girls to defend their party and their party’s interests”
She said, “The political parties come and go in and out of office. They write their manifestos and that is it. However, the NGOs are the consistent flow and force of people and peoples’ organisations that have stood the test of time.”
Guyana’s low political culture, she said, is part of the problem on how the country advances under the theme of good governance and sustainable development as a rights-based nation.
Attacks on civil society
“The attacks on civil society by the leadership of this country [are occurring] because we are very divided politically. Race and politics go together and although there are moments of truth and excellence, they are like poison that has been seeping very long and it is deepening at present. You can’t denigrate the genuine and resilient history of NGOs, CSOs and community-based organisations (CBOs), especially the rights and advocacy based ones.”
Women’s rights-based and grassroots-based women’s rights organisations, she said, are critical to good governance and Guyana as a nation.
She said it was unfortunate to hear President Irfaan Ali and government ministers in 2022 branding upstanding, locally and internationally recognised NGOs and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) as politically motivated. “That is fundamentally wrong. Guyana is a longstanding member of the United Nations family and the UN revolves around civil society and NGOs.”
She does not understand the impetus for Ali’s remarks. “He is usually a moderate, temperate person when he makes public speeches. It bothers me and it has repercussions for civil society organisations. Way back in the 1980s during the days of the Burnham dictatorship when we started Red Thread, if you were an NGO, very foolishly you were considered an anti-government organisation.”
Red Thread was formed, she said, with a diverse set of women who had affiliations to several political parties of the day but yet they were able to work together with passion, fortitude and vision concerning women, especially working women and grassroots women aligned with progressive middle-class women.
Noting that Red Thread has done a survey on the current cost of a basic market basket and compared it with previous years, she queried, “Who are doing the research and advocating on behalf of women? It is the NGOs who should be lauded and applauded for the work they do, a lot of them voluntarily. The cost of living in Guyana for the normal basket is phenomenal. A lot of women cannot buy vegetables and greens anymore.”
On a recent programme with a cross-section of Guyanese, she said, she was surprised to hear a colleague trying to justify the President’s position that a lot of the NGOs were politically affiliated and were the mouthpiece of political parties.
“I could not for the life of me understand what was being said. The NGOs I am associated and affiliated with are advocacy, rights-based and people-centred NGOs. They are completely non-aligned to political parties. The most political entities in this country are in fact the political parties and those formations that are affiliated to them politically. We are non-governmental and we have been non-governmental with successive governments.”
The alliances of women, scientists, environmentalists, archaeologists and advocates, she said, are the members of civil society who are writing and exposing what is not right about the current oil and gas ‘Drill, Baby, Drill!’ approach that is taking place in Guyana.
“These are the transparent and the accountable ways of having citizens participate in decision making. Article 13 gives us that right in the constitution and nobody is entitled to take that away from us.”
In organisations in which she is a member, Radzik said, “if governments do things in keeping with good governance and moving Guyana forward with equality, we will say that. If they do anything that is wrong, criminal and is taking us backward, we will also say that.”
Instead of painting all CSOs and NGOs with a broad brush, she said, “What the President should have done was call out the organisations that he was speaking about. It is a dangerous statement to make because it is the kind of thing that could brand Guyana as being non-democratic, non-diverse and not open to the opinions of the wider civil society.”
The Women’s Progressive Organisation (WPO), the women’s arm of the People’s Progressive Party and the National Congress of Women (NCW), the women’s arm of the People’s National Congress Reform, are also women-led socio-political organisations, she said. “They do
community work and are not only engaged in politicking or political party business. With rich histories, and outside of the electioneering season, they have both contributed in a positive way to the quality of lives, basic needs and well-being of the women they represent.”
WGEC
The constitutional reform process, Radzik noted, involved a cross-section of women like Jean La Rose, who was vocal on the commissions, especially the one that dealt with Indigenous peoples, and other women of the ilk of Anande Trotman, Jocelyn Dow, Andaiye and herself.
“Out of the process came some very visionary outcomes, such as making all of the conventions that Guyana had signed and a part of Guyana’s jurisprudence. For us, the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) was the platform for the formation of the WGEC.”
The WGEC is led by Indra Chandarpal, WPO chairperson and Cheryl Sampson, the NCW chairperson with Chanderpal as chair and Sampson as deputy chair. “They were elected by the rest of us. I am one of three women representing women social NGOs.” There are other women representing the private sector, trades union, the Indigenous and Rastafari communities, and women who are defenders of children’s rights and regional organisations.
Regional organisations include the Wapichan Women’s Movement, the Makushi Research Unit attached to the North Rupununi Development Board and the Upper Mazaruni District Council. “These NGOs are moving Guyana forward in good governance. They need to be supported, financed, awarded, and given the respect by everyone, especially the powerful and those in authority.”
The commissioners worked very hard, she said, but have not been in the public eye much. “We have monthly statutory meetings and several committees meet in between. Even when we were established and had no budget, we worked on a completely voluntary basis to get the ball rolling”, she said.
In spite of the behaviour of the men-led parties they represent, Radzik said, Chanderpal and Sampson work well together and have been exemplary. “This is the kind of bridge building, alliances that can be built across the political divide in Guyana. We have had some hot debates but we have always made our decisions by consensus. I single this out because it is not a well-known fact.”
Making another appeal to the Parliament to establish a women’s caucus, she said, “Imagine if we had a women’s caucus of the PPP, APNU-AFC and all the other small parties, this would propel Guyana forward. Our appeals in the past have fallen on barren ground on either side in the Parliament.”
Regardless of their political persuasion, she said, there are basic things that every Guyanese woman would want to see in terms of legislation and implementation mechanisms to deter rape, sexual assault and sexual offences of all kind.
“If we had a caucus of women in the Parliament, matters of domestic violence, trafficking in persons, even matters in which Guyana is 100 years behind the times on LGBTQI+ rights, beating of children and violent disciplining of children and gender budgeting could come to the fore in the Parliament. We are 51 percent of Guyana’s population and we are entitled to equality across the divides.”
Even before the WGEC was established, the late Magda Pollard who headed the National Commission on Women, Radzik said, promoted the idea of the women’s caucus. “We wrote to the authorities and had stuff in the press. We had forums where it gained attention. When one person, she would remain unnamed, wrote us back, she said, ‘We already have this’ through a Commonwealth medium. We wrote to the Parliament and to some of the then leaders in the Parliament. The replies were not positive.”
During one general and regional elections campaign, she said, the women candidates of different political parties met at a forum at Hotel Tower and stated their intention to form a women’s caucus if they were elected to Parliament. The women’s caucus is still needed, she said.
