The Tribune

By Malcolm Strachan

A HUMAN rights committee is to be set up after a resolution was passed in the House of Assembly – the question is, will it make a difference or will it be as ineffective as the Parliamentary Accounts Committee?

The latter has not achieved anything notable in years – hamstrung by members failing to turn up or by rules that limit its reach. It should be one of the most powerful committees in the country – that it is not, under multiple administrations, is an ample demonstration of how seriously governments take accountability and transparency.

So will a human rights committee be any different? There is certainly a need for a greater focus on human rights, across a whole range of areas.

In 2018, for example, three people claim they were detained by police in Eleuthera – where they subsequently claim they were tortured by police. The claims include being beaten, bound, being fishbagged and having hot sauce poured into their eyes. They were released without charge. After filing a complaint with police, the trio were told that even though they complained in a timely manner, the delay before the police addressed the complaint meant they were out of time.

This is one of the kinds of issues that a human rights committee, properly tasked and properly funded, could certainly address – the abuses that are visited upon people all too often.

There have of course been other accusations against police – it is a common occurrence in court for a suspect to claim that a confession has been beaten out of him. Just because they say it does not make it true, of course, but some cases have been backed up with evidence of bruising or illness.

Then there have been the videos that have circulated online – officers swinging batons at people during a Junkanoo parade, officers lifting a man in the air then throwing him to the ground, or the video circulated of the death of Azario Major, who was shot multiple times by police and whose family have spent more than $40,000 engaging private experts to analyse the incident.

What a human rights committee could do to intercede in such matters remains unclear – would it be able to request footage from CCTV or from officers’ body cameras, for example? Would it be able to independently investigate even if that duplicates processes carried out by the police complaints authority or by the coroner’s court?

Policing is not the only area where there are concerns at times, of course – the stories that come out of the detention centre can be horrific, and the prison is not nicknamed Fox Hell for nothing. Each of these areas fall under the category of human rights.

Then there are issues such as marital rape – an area which still has people struggling to agree that “no” means “no”. Internationally, The Bahamas has signed agreements that commit the country to ending gender-based violence, but how will a committee be able to hold the whole Parliament to account for not backing up its international commitments with legislative action?

In terms of how it will work, the committee will comprise five members of the House of Assembly and three members of the Senate.

The resolution to create the committee said: “(The committee would) assess and evaluate all matters related to the protection and enforcement of human rights in The Bahamas; determine the level at which such rights are in compliance with regional and global obligations; report to Parliament every six months on human rights matters; make recommendations to guide the legislative process to improve human rights in the Bahamas; investigate alleged human rights violations through parliamentary inquiries, holding public hearings on human rights related issues, with power to send for persons and papers, with leave to sit from place to place, and with leave to sit during recess.”

National Security Minister Wayne Munroe, who led the debate on the resolution, said the committee would not undermine the judiciary’s powers.

He said: “From the wording of the resolution, there is no attempt to evade the jurisdiction of the judiciary via this legislation. They will still be left as the guardians of our laws and the guardians of our rights.”

That may be so – but one example of an area where the justice system has been failing in recent years has been the failure to conduct inquests into police-involved shootings in a timely manner.

Those have resumed in recent times – with a considerable backlog to work through – but if that situation occurs again, will the committee be able to hold the justice system itself to account for failing to give families the answers they need when relatives are shot dead and years pass before cases even begin?

There are no shortage of issues under the human rights umbrella – immigration is another area where abuses have been claimed. Shanty towns are a hot topic at any time here in The Bahamas, but often with a focus on the people living in them rather than the all-too-common situation of who those people are paying rent to, and who those landlords are who allow such construction and then reap the benefit from it.

A committee could make real progress in examining all sides of such a problem – but how much faith do we have that will happen?

And don’t even think that the committee will go anywhere near issues such as gay rights. If you think there will be a discussion at such a committee about a topic such as same-sex marriage, then I have a bridge to Paradise Island to sell you.

Perhaps I am cynical, but this looks like a committee created to report in every six months just so the country can say look, we have reported every six months.

There is an opportunity here to bring about real change – tackle the issues of alleged abuses, enforce our commitments to equality and push for human rights for all.

But if this proves to be nothing more than a tick box exercise, it is not worth the time in Parliament spent in creating it. When that first report comes in, that’s when we’ll be able to judge how much this committee really matters.