Liberating state information

There are at least three recent developments in T&T that have highlighted both our “culture of secrecy” and the impact of our freedom of information legislation.

I have selected just a few scenarios to highlight today, because they focus on actions initiated by three different players - a political activist, the media, and a regular citizen – all acting on their own behalf but with results that have positive implications for the rest of society.

Though mainly well-placed campaigners and a generally tenacious media are among the more frequent users of our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the intervention of Nadia Singh, mother of SEA top achiever, Anushka Singh, caught my attention.

This is so since I believe that while advocacy has routinely been left to media operatives and social and political activists, their main benefits are meant to assist regular folks in the conduct of their daily lives.

The other recent development we should not allow to pass unnoticed is GML journalist, Kejan Haynes’, exposé on unpaid fines associated with pandemic mask mandates between September 2020 and July 2022.

In the case of Kejan’s story, the FOI request was directed to the judiciary. Ms Singh’s application was made to the ministry of education. The third instance involved the police service and had to reach the High Court.

Perennial FOIA applicant, Ravi Balgobin Maharaj, had successfully challenged the refusal of the Office of the Commissioner of Police to publish mandatory FOI statements. The court made it clear that its failure to do so was in breach of a statutory requirement.

These examples are with respect to three public institutions that are provably problematic at different levels and for different reasons. But they are all significant custodians of official information.

There are, of course, other spectacular instances of the FOIA being put to use by people with a concern about transparency issues related to matters of public interest. I apologise for some significant omissions.

There is also frequently an international dynamic at play. For instance, non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) for the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines captured the attention of Transparency International when it studied 182 vaccine procurement contracts back in 2021.

In only 13 cases were such contracts publicly available, but heavily redacted on account of NDAs. There is a lot of room here for international collaboration on examining this phenomenon. Contrary to political messaging on the subject here, T&T was not the only country victimised by this practice.

Two organisations with which I am associated – the Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC) and the Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers (ACM) – have invested considerable time and other resources over the years to get Caribbean legislators to work more seriously on bringing enlightened access to information laws to the parliamentary table.

The MIC recently launched two important resources to assist media, activists, and citizens interested in this field of endeavour. The first is a Freedom of Information Help Desk, which is a cloud-based, secure platform for journalists, civil society organisations, and private individuals seeking assistance with requests under their respective FOI/Access to Information laws.

The second is an advocacy toolkit that provides detailed guidance on both the strengthening of existing law and practices, and the enactment of legislation where it currently does not exist.

A slender majority of Caricom countries now have such legislation, and there is a clear need to have them fortified through application of a principle described under Article 13 of the American Convention as “the principle of maximum disclosure.”

In fact, while Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, Pedro Vaca, spoke at an MIC forum with Caribbean journalists on Monday, he specified conditions that needed to apply in order to satisfy such an aspiration.

There is insufficient space to discuss all of them here, but among the things he addressed was the acceptability of limitations inserted into the law or applied as official procedure. In T&T, legislators have gratuitously toyed with the concept in measures of knee-jerk prohibition.

The question of private entities involved in activities in which there are public interest concerns also arises. Our FOIA needs to more firmly address this. It extends beyond the requirements of corporate and commercial law.

There are sufficient examples of how our FOIA can work better on our behalf. There is evidence that people are more prepared now to use it when the need arises. This is a good thing. Anuska Singh’s will be among the names to be called if or when we eventually get this right.

 

Children need to be in school

Among the areas of unfinished national business mentioned in this space last week was our determined unwillingness to meet several commitments boastfully declared over the years as favoured obligations under international convention.

We do not stand alone on this question and need not feel solely targeted by the contention that global standards for the conduct of states are routinely ignored and therefore undermined with impunity almost everywhere. But that’s of little comfort and no excuse for our own recalcitrance.

We can look near and far for tragic examples. The abuse of power. Institutionalised hypocrisy on issues of ethnicity, gender, age, nationality, and other values that embrace diversity.

Almost all of this has, at various times, found expression through the numerous treaties we have endorsed and held high for the media cameras, and before other countries. In our case, there are scores of them.

What is disturbing is that as historically chronic subjects of breaches, countries such as ours refuse to pay closer attention to the things that distinguish orderly human conduct from the acts of savages.

So, here I return to the conscious and active denial of the rights of migrant children to an education in T&T.

There is nothing to convince me that there is a firm commitment to meet such an obligation under the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, other global instruments, and perhaps our own constitution and law.

What might have led to this pathetic pass is subject to deeper analysis. But among the reasons is the absence of any persistent body of mass public opinion or mobilisation on the subject. Not one tyre has burned for this.

As mere elections machines, the political parties do not focus on human rights, and our education system does not consider questions of human rights to be central to all areas of development.

This is thus not simply a matter of (party) political will, but of the absence of active civic engagement in such subjects. Be careful, this is not to devalue the work of NGOs and CSOs that conduct ameliorative work to correct transgressions. They have key post facto roles to play. It is also not to ignore other undeniable failures in the treatment of all children.

But, in few instances can we find determined application of rights as prescribed by convention and, in even their absence, instinctual resort to notions of social justice.

The “close de borders” and “send dem back” crowds of 2019 and 2020 cannot now claim moral space on the issue of educating migrant children without official barriers.

If you approved of steel-tipped boots against the advancing bows of small migrant boats in stormy weather with men, women, and children on board, there is nothing you can say or do to convince me that you are now serious about providing the means to meet the needs of such children. Get lost!

Likewise, it was good that special, ad hoc arrangements were made in 2019 to accommodate migrants who were already here and to slow the pace of inflows – however much some of it was not in compliance with accepted global protocols.

The UNHCR’s direction on this was largely ignored and angrily dismissed. But there was clearly very little thought by all concerned about the challenges of a process to eventually settle people – either here or in other destinations. Consequently, the current ad hoc system strips humans of their self-respect and dignity.

As both historical subjects and objects of migration, we should know better. But we clearly don’t.

It is not enough to cite the numbers in the PR without advocating an understanding of the meaning behind the statistics. There are children in T&T, as 2023 approaches, who, unless private arrangements are made, will not receive a formal education.

There are babies becoming toddlers, and toddlers becoming pre-teens, and pre-teens becoming teenagers who are being systematically and actively deprived of the means to transition from one stage of personal development to the next. If there is a single major feature of social dysfunctionality among the youth it is the absence of a wholesome education.

It is also my understanding that the means to achieve the key objectives exist and that space, personnel, and other resources are available. If they are not, we should be made aware of the audits and studies which determined otherwise over the three-plus years we have had to consider all this.

Meanwhile, don’t come to us with “season’s greetings” until that’s a part of the message of goodwill to all men, women, and children in and of T&T. Let’s start 2023 on different terms please.

(Published in T&T Guardian on December 28, 2022)