The group Working Women For Social Progress is urging Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and his Government to ensure there was a strong ministerial portfolio that pursues and directs the optimum development of children.
In a press release yesterday the group said it had taken decades of advocacy from the women’s movement and other organs of civil society for successive governments to wake up and “stumble willy-nilly” towards ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to amending the Children Act and also to set up “a still limping” Children’s Authority.
But in the meantime, the group said a large number of children in T&T continued to live in painful circumstances from which they had no escape and were often subjected to suffer daily violence in the name of discipline, sexual abuse, neglect and child marriage.
It added: “Too often, corporal punishment, this sanctioned violence against children, ends in death.
“In the second decade of the 21st century, many of our people still think that beating children is a normal, acceptable part of family life.
“For us it is a matter of grave concern that some members of your government applaud and advocate this practice.
“Such a position within the political directorate undermines all good intentions with regard to the care, protection and healthy development of children.”
The group added that leaders must be forthright in matters such as those and provide information and guidance and take positions based on international human rights principles, rather than cave in to misguided views inherited from a violent history.
“No administration has seen fit to equip parents with better tools for raising non-violent, self-disciplined, children in a modern world,” the release added.
On the issue of gender and sexuality, Working Women said although much progress had been made, the struggle was not yet over.
It said among the problems that were far from being resolved included inequality in women’s wages, the high incidence of poverty among women-headed households, domestic violence, sexual harassment, high rates of maternal mortality and infant mortality and thousands of unsafe backstreet abortions.
The group said arising from those illegal abortions an estimated 3,000-4,000 women a year were warded at public hospitals with complications.
It added: “Gender equity has a bearing on every aspect of national development. T&T’s National Gender Policy still remained in limbo after decades of advocacy.
“The perspective on sexual orientation presented in the original 2006 version of the National Gender Policy is one of the reasons why it was rejected by the PNM government under which it was developed.
“Almost all of our politicians to date have considered it safe to ignore, condemn, or make snide remarks about differences in people’s sexual orientation, for example, describing as “fashionable” the struggle of the LGBT community in our country against criminalisation, discrimination and prejudice.
Describing the matter as a human rights issue which could no longer be shunted from one administration to the next it added:
“It was not an issue to be resolved by ‘consultation’ for this means asking the rest of the population to decide whether a minority group deserves to be recognised as equal under the law.
“Would any government consult the public on whether one of our minority ethnic groups should enjoy equal human rights?
“Sexual orientation is only one of the gender issues on which an enlightened government would lead and for this there has to be a gender portfolio charged with facilitating public education.”
Regarding the environment it said sustainable planning and management of air, water and other natural resources was an essential government portfolio.
“The country needs to be concerned about rising sea levels and the protection of our seashores; deforestation and its consequences— landslides, flooding and the silting of rivers and solid waste management, among other pressing environmental issues.
“A responsible government would also be expected to decisively tackle the environmental issue of everyday, widespread noise pollution in our country.
“The current provisions for addressing this problem are manifestly inadequate. There are deficiencies in legislation, enforcement and public education.
“The problem of unbridled noise-making is escalating and it is a major indicator of the descent into anarchy that our country seems to be experiencing. It is a form of abuse that has to be curbed, for it has far-reaching negative impacts on our society,” the group said.