Silent crisis

The country’s public defender has raised an alarm over a mounting human rights crisis, emphasising that widespread ignorance among Jamaicans about their human rights is enabling the State to trespass on their fundamental rights.

Carolyn Reid-Cameron, King’s Counsel, has called for urgent public education on human rights – not just in the area of education or youth, but on a broad scale – as the issue touches many areas.

“I have found that in this country, incrementally, we are leaning back and allowing a lot of our rights to be taken away from us or allowing our rights to be encroached upon, and we are comfortable with it.

“So, the crisis or the human rights challenge that I see is the fact that we are not generally aware of our rights, and we are comfortable allowing the State to slowly encroach on those rights,” said Reid-Cameron. “We do not appreciate that we are in jeopardy.”

She was among a group of advocates who issued a clarion call for Jamaicans to know their rights and responsibilities, and called for greater public education during a symposium at the ROK Hotel in downtown Kingston, held as part of the Office of the Public Defender’s 25th anniversary observance.

Reid-Cameron pointed to the increasing comfort many Jamaicans have shown in accepting restrictive measures.

“So, for example, we are more comfortable – some of us – with regular states of emergency or regular zones of special operations. In fact, if you look on social media, you’ll see persons sometimes clamouring for those sorts of restrictions or encroachments on the rights that we currently have,” she said, noting that this apathy could lead to a dangerous situation where citizens unknowingly relinquish their freedoms.

Echoing similar sentiments, Captain Natalie James, human-rights specialist in the Ministry of Legal and Constitutional Affairs, emphasised the need to address gaps in human rights education across the island.

“A lot of persons in Jamaica don’t know what their human rights and responsibilities are. So what you find is that persons will say, ‘I have a right; I know my right.’ But when you really have a conversation with them, they don’t actually know what those rights are,” she shared.

At the same time, James stressed the importance of people being aware of their responsibilities, and not to infringe on the rights of others.

She noted that her ministry, in collaboration with the Office of the Public Defender and the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA), has been conducting sensitisation sessions to educate the public on their rights and responsibilities, and to inform them which agencies to contact if they feel their rights have been breached.

Understand the rights of children

As an extension of the issue of human rights awareness, CPFSA legal officer Jhana Harris underscored the need for adults to understand the rights of children. She highlighted that many people are ignorant of children’s rights and their entitlement to personhood.

“They don’t believe that children should have a say, that children should be heard. So, we are saying that we should acknowledge children as human beings – as persons – because people don’t understand the long-term effects of slapping a child, always verbally quarrelling with the child, shouting at the child, scolding the child. It really does impact their self-esteem, their self-confidence, and how they present themselves to the world,” she said.

In the meantime, Justice Jennifer Straw, while welcoming the concerns about the lack of awareness of children’s rights, issued a challenge for the State, including agencies such as the CPFSA, to educate parents and communities about human responsibilities.

“To break parents and communities out of child abuse, it’s going to take a recrafting of the culture,” she said. “We’re going to be fighting this human rights issue forever and ever unless our culture is recrafted.”

However, Harris responded that the CPFSA has already begun efforts to reshape how children are treated, noting that the agency has started going into communities and has been holding parenting sessions in collaboration with the National Parenting Support Commission.

tanesha.mundle@gleanerjm.com