Great strides made in education, child rights advocate says

Child rights advocate Faith Marshall-Harris has hailed “the great strides made in education” in Barbados, as well as child justice.

Delivering the feature address at the annual conference of the International Society of Family Law, Marshall-Harris highlighted Barbados as a prime example where there will be a $400 million investment in education, which will include curriculum reform, greater testing for intellectual disability and teacher training, among other improvements.

“Child justice … this is on a very patchy road. We are still more inclined to use what you could call the ‘lick and lock up’ approach to child justice rather than rehabilitation,” she said.

“It is only in very recent days that we in Barbados have been able to get us to a point where we passed child justice legislation based on a modern approach … it has been passed but it has not been proclaimed and I live in a state of prayer that that will soon happen.”

The United Nations child rights experts also deplored the use of corporal punishment throughout the region, although she lauded Trinidad and Tobago for having banned corporal punishment in schools, and suggested that countries educate its populations prior to passing laws totally banning corporal punishment.

While praising efforts made to keep children healthy, Marshall-Harris pinpointed the growing incidence of childhood obesity and concomitant NCDs, resulting, she speculated from the new diet of fast food and lack of exercise. She lauded the work of the Healthy Caribbean Collation to counter this development.
Marshall-Harris expressed deep concern that the Caribbean states were not providing timely reports to the UNCRC, as required under its Rules, and that the Caribbean states were not collecting data to ensure that plans and strategies were data-driven to ensure maximum effect, and that any data collected was neither disaggregated or shared with the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, Marshall-Harris paid glowing tribute to the “trailblazing” work of Dame Sandra Mason, President of Barbados, who she said sat as a member of the UNCRC from the  inception of that Committee in the 1990s and later became one of its first Chairs.

As the only member from the Caribbean, Marshall-Harris contended that this placed the Caribbean at the forefront of championing children’s rights in those early days of the Convention.

Marshall-Harris noted that therefore it was appropriate to pay tribute to Dame Sandra and others who were the first experts who endeavored to ensure that the promise made by 196 countries around the world to safeguard and nurture children was kept. (PR)