The denial of students’ rights at the New Opportunity Corps continues

Dear Editor,

The trampling and denial of the rights of young students at the New Opportunity Corps (NOC) continues unabated even as the Government of Guyana rolled out rallies and other activities to mark Child Protection Week.

We are aware that since the second week of June 2014 the long awaited full report of the 2012 COI investigation has been completed and is with the Minister of Culture Youth & Sport. As such, while we repeat our call for a full and public disclosure of the finding of this long awaited report the government and the Minister of Youth Culture & Sport cannot escape responsibility that their failure as duty bearers to take adequate action after the events of August 2012 has had a direct bearing on the more recent reports of physical and sexual abuse of NOC female students.

We know statements made in January of 2013 and reflected in the summary report of the COI pointed to poor administration, lack of adequately trained staff who often had no clear understanding or knowledge of policies, roles and responsibilities, inappropriate supervision of students and abusive practices and disciplinary measures meted out to students at the juvenile facility.

In spite of the above, reports in 2014 from young women removed from the NOC by the Director of the Child Care & Protection Agency and placed in protective custody attest to continuing incidents of sexual abuse and the use of a detention/punishment room called the ‘quiet room’ where students were place naked with the use of only a bucket to relieve themselves for periods of 2 days.

Notwithstanding a break-out, arson and continued reports of physical and sexual abuse at NOC, state responses have been inadequate, in violation of the human rights of NOC students and in conflict with best practices worldwide for addressing the issue of young people in conflict with the law.

Alarmingly the constructing of a special confinement building of 9ft x 12ft ‘holding cells’ for further detention of NOC students points to a government and state institutions which are out of touch, insensitive and either have not read their own Juvenile Justice Bill drafted since 2009 which is secretly gathering dust on shelves, or have scant regard for the human rights of juveniles in conflict with the law, and are in violation of UN conventions and standard rules for the administration of juvenile justice.

The Government of Guyana is also guilty of refusing to outlaw “status offences” as recommended by UN agencies and Guyanese civil society groups, chief of which is the offence of ‘Wandering.’ Juveniles charged with this ‘offence’ are not offenders but victims of child abuse and neglect, and many students at NOC especially, are teenage girls committed for this offence who are therefore being penalised for being victims and survivors of child abuse.

The Government of Guyana has stubbornly refused to enact the Juvenile Justice Bill (JJB) which recognizes that Guyana is a party to the United Nations convention on the rights of the child and recognizes that juveniles have rights and freedoms, including those stated in the United Nations standard rules for the administration of Juvenile Justice and the United Nations rules for the protection of juveniles deprived of their liberty, which have special guarantees of their rights and freedoms. Further the JJB in its preamble commits to “a juvenile justice system that commands respect, takes into account the interests of victims, fosters responsibility and ensures accountability through meaningful consequences and effective rehabilitation and reintegration, and that reserves its most serious intervention for the most serious crimes and reduces the over-reliance on incarceration for non-violent juveniles.”

Based on the above we call on the government to make good its 2009 promise to bring the Juvenile Justice Bill to parliament; we call for an independent Task Force to be set up to investigate fully the functioning of the NOC based on, but not limited to the findings of the 2012 COI report; we call for the NOC to be placed under an independent management committee comprising individuals with the necessary expertise, experience, interest and knowledge of human rights law and practice to run a successful juvenile rehabilitation centre; we call for all status offences and in particular the offence of wandering to be repealed; and we demand that students and former students of NOC be granted independent legal representation as is their right in moving forward with prosecution of offences against them if so wished.

 

Yours faithfully,
Danuta Radzikand
Josephine Whitehead
Help & Shelter
Wintress White
Red Thread
Melinda Janki
Justice Institute