Students from the OU College of Law submitted a report last week to the United Nations Humans Rights Council about the state of human rights of indigenous people in Guyana.
The United Nations set up a program to review the condition of the indigenous people of its 192 member states by 2011, said Mike Davis, a third-year law student and co-writer of the report. Uninvolved groups help in the review process of a member state, he said.
“The point is accountability,” Davis said. “States make promises about human rights, so this is a public record of it.”
The International Human Rights Clinic at the OU College of Law focused on how four areas — mining, deforestation, sex work and human trafficking, and education and health care – affect the indigenous people of Guyana, located in South America. Guyana is bordered by Suriname, Venezuela and Brazil.
Work on the report began with research at the beginning of the fall semester and concluded with a final presentation Monday, said Conor Cleary, a third-year law student and co-writer of the report.
“We were required to work 10 office hours a week,” Cleary said. “But we definitely did more than that as we got closer to the submission of the report.”
Davis, who worked on the mining section of the report, said that the Guyana government has made efforts to protect the land of indigenous peoples from mining, like requiring permission from villagers to mine and having officials monitor mining activity.
However, Davis said an official, the minister of mines, can veto the vote of villagers and that there are only 20 officials monitoring a country the size of Idaho.
His portion of the report recommended changes in these areas to bolster the land rights of the indigenous people.
Sex work and human trafficking is a large human rights problem in Guyana, said Julia Mills, a third-year law student and co-writer of the report.
“Unfortunately, it is the most lucrative business for women in Guyana,” Mills said.
Women often have limited choices because of the lack of education and development in indigenous areas, she said.
The Guyanese government implemented campaigns and shelters to educate and protect women, but indigenous people have little access to these because they are often only in the cities, Mills said.
She recommended that the U.N. make sure indigenous people have more access to help and education and that Guyana courts enforce laws against trafficking and sex work.
Guyana recorded goals to provide health care and education to everyone, but indigenous people often lack access to these because they do not live in the cities, said Amanda Mullins, a third-year law student and co-writer of the report.
Although the government has programs designed to help the indigenous people obtain access, there is not a lot of data on their effectiveness, Mullins said.
She recommended that the U.N. provide incentives to doctors and teachers to work in indigenous villages and build bilingual schools.
The U.N. will review the report and create its own official report, Davis said. In four years, another group will make an updated report on Guyana to see if conditions have changed.
Next semester, the International Human Rights Clinic will report about Panama, Cleary said. Those students will actually travel to Panama to get a better picture of what it is like.
The Oklahoma Daily is pleased to provide you the opportunity to share your thoughts about this article. We encourage lively debate on the issues of the day, but we ask you refrain from using profanity or other offensive speech, engaging in personal attacks or name-calling, posting advertising, or straying from the topic at hand. To comment, you must be a registered user of OUDaily.com. Thanks for taking the time to offer your thoughts.
You must be logged in to leave a comment. Log in | Register
MVelikonja 2 years, 3 months ago
I would like to contact Mike Davis or Conor Cleary about their very interesting report on Guyana and human trafficking. I have some questions I'd like to ask them. I can be contacted at MVelikonja@aol.com
Thank you Maria Velikonja