Human Rights and Vulnerability

CVC has identified human rights violations as a significant cross cutting feature that is at the base of the majority of issues that confront vulnerable populations in the Caribbean region. Consequently human rights have become one of the major focal points and drivers of our work.

As an integral part of its human rights advocacy work, CVC utilizes the social change model that looks beyond the surface to the core of the issues at hand. In that regard CVC identifies vulnerability as being typified by a combination of social, cultural, economic and political factors, many of which hamper the efforts of those working to minimize the impact of HIV on society. In the Caribbean, vulnerability is linked to dominant norms, particularly the discourse on what is proper and appropriate for national public space, and failures of key institutions such as the justice system and police, the media, the church, and the education system.

Caribbean societies, built on exclusion of the majority through slavery, indentureship and colonial rule, have evolved, in response, a clear nationalist awareness of the rights of the majority. Unfortunately, this brings with it a privileging of the values of majority or dominant groups such as blacks and Christians, with hard won battles for respect for some minorities in some countries. In most cases however, neither racial or ethnic minorities, nor people with whom we at CVC are most concerned, are able to find a home in their country as themselves.  There are some exceptions - Curacao for example - but for almost all the Caribbean, nationalism and the dominance of minorities by the majority mean that rights are not guaranteed, and to the extent that persons seem to threaten or “contaminate” the public space with disapproved behaviours, they are treated as outcasts. Thus, conceptions of what is accepted by the nation, sometimes codified in law, continually create the tools for reinforcing the marginalisation and subordination, sometimes willy-nilly, of certain populations. These populations include sex workers, substance users, inmates, men who have sex with men, mobile populations, youth at high risk of incarceration, and orphans and other children made vulnerable by HIV and AIDS. The work of CVC member organisations on the ground makes it clear that gender, youth, poverty, disability, living with HIV, and language differences exacerbate the vulnerabilities of these groups.

It is against that background that CVC formed a working group on human rights that consists of human rights activists, legal reform advocates and law faculty members, and members of excluded groups themselves, to strategise and support each other at the regional, national and global levels. Formed in the Dominican Republic in September 2007, this group is a critical element of CVC's concern to address the root causes of the epidemic by addressing fundamental questions of human rights and social justice. Its members come from all walks of life and from across the Caribbean, and have been called upon to be part of other Caribbean and international discussions on rights and rights-based policy and law debates, as well as programming. (link to Yogyakarta Principles)