The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) is calling for a national conversation on the economic significance of ethnicity in Guyana and described the developing policies to accommodate the new type of society Guyana is becoming as not encouraging.
In a press release issued yesterday, the human rights advocacy body stated that “The influence of ethnicity on Guyana’s inability to move forward as a nation has been considerable and we should not under-estimate the new challenges posed when economic differences are dividing rather than uniting the society. Rather than a rigid categorizing of individual rights, Guyana perhaps needs a national conversation on the economic significance of ethnicity. Priority in such a conversation must be given to the concept of ‘fairness’ as a way of bridging conflicts arising from application of individual human rights in the same manner to all citizens and non-citizens with due regard to the diversity of the national society. Fairness cannot be achieved by unregulated market forces. Fairness also requires that we also respect women, religion and cultural differences that make up identities in modern society. As a criterion for mediating between rigid categories of ‘individual’ and ‘group’ rights, ‘fairness’ has much to commend it.”