December 2010


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The rights we cherish

 

This is the address to graduates from the Faculty of Social Sciences delivered by honorary graduate, Mrs Diana Mahabir-Wyatt, on October 29, 2010.

I would like to begin by thanking the University for this honour. To me, it is the greatest honour that I have ever received or will be likely to receive in this life.

I am also gratified to have been asked to address this gathering of new graduates. I have been to more graduation ceremonies than I can count, including a couple of my own, and I can’t remember a single word of a single speech that any speaker uttered in any of those ceremonies. So I don’t expect you to remember anything any of us say here today, including what I am about to say.

So instead of making a speech, I thought, since it is, after all, a cause for celebration, I want to pass on to you a couple of gifts that have helped me on my way.

The first gift is a gift that reflects an aphorism from the famous Danish Mathematician and philosopher, Piet Hein:

Here is a thought
That should make you
Live longer.
Whatever doesn’t kill you
Outright
Makes you stronger.

That first gift is to recommend that you be not afraid of making mistakes. You don’t really learn anything much if you get things right all the time… it is when you really mess up and have to figure out what you did wrong, how you did it wrongly and how to make up for it that you really start learning about life. The more you mess up early in life and find out how to recover from it, the better the rest of your life is going to be.

The second gift I want to pass on is to tell you that, whether you know it or not, and the chances are that no one has ever told you, because most people in authority over you will never want you to know, you have Rights. Human Rights. Rights that can never be taken away from you. They are yours by virtue of the fact that you were born. They apply to all people everywhere, in school at work, at home, or in the community, and they cannot be taken away from you, although many people will try. If they are denied, you can seek redress.

Even children, weak and powerless as they so often are, have rights, although adults often deny this. The abuse of children in this society is endemic because adults do not respect the rights of children, not even the right of a child to be heard in their own defence, and so they are abused physically, sexually and emotionally. If you object to child abuse, you are already on the way to becoming a human rights activist. Beating children, like sexually abusing them is a denial and abuse of human rights.

Find out what your rights are and when someone tries to deny you or someone else around you the exercise of those rights, make up your mind to either accept the curtailment or to speak up and take action. You have a choice. Only you can truly decide to fight for your rights and for the rights of others or to give them up.

If you do nothing when someone else’s rights are being abused, you will be creating the environment that will allow yours to be denied and abused when the wheel turns your way. Remember we are all only temporarily able-bodied. What goes around comes around.

That is the important thing about the observance of rights. If you want yours to be respected, you have to respect the rights of others. You have to actually listen to other people when they defend themselves against accusations, whether they be personal and intimate or public and organisational. It is up to you as adults to find out what your rights are, and learn that for every right you have, you have a corresponding responsibility.

The last gift that I have to pass on is the knowledge that all that life is, is about relationships. Everything you strive for is really to obtain, build and sustain relationships. If you want a home, it is to house relationships. If you want a career, it is to build and sustain relationships. If you want to look good, sound wise, to be impressive in your life, it is to build and sustain relationships. Spiritual power, financial power, intellectual power, political power …are all about relationships, and at the core of successful relationships is the observance of the rules of natural justice and the observance of human rights.

There is no other way. And make no mistake about it, Trinidad & Tobago, with all its faults and weaknesses is one of the countries in the Commonwealth where the respect and observance of human rights is greatest. The freedom of expression that is enjoyed here over talk shows, in print and e-mail would land people in jail in most other countries. Do you know of another country where the Chief Justice has been brought before the courts as well as the Leader of the Opposition? Where Ministers of State are fined for reckless driving and those who led a revolt against the State ended up being given scholarships to study abroad, and returned to head state enterprises? Where most of the Magistrates and a substantial chunk of the Judiciary are female?

Look around you.

Sometimes we forget what we have. But we must work hard not to lose it. Not to lose what we have through the entropy that the Chancellor spoke about a few minutes ago, and work hard to prevent the erosion that happens when people abuse power. There is no other way. Ensuring the knowledge and observance of human rights is the only way that we can pay back the country for what it has given you and me here today.

Diana Mahabir-Wyatt

Diana Mahabir-Wyatt has been an untiring champion for the rights of domestic workers, women, children and the elderly for more than three decades. Born in Toronto, Canada in 1941, she grew up in northern Quebec, and at the age of 17, enrolled at McGill University in Montreal, graduating in 1962. She has lived and worked for most of her adult life in Trinidad and Tobago. Her first jobs were in education, first at St. Augustine Girls’ High School and then at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus.

She is a human resource and industrial relations consultant, but her public profile associates her powerfully with social activism.

Mrs. Mahabir-Wyatt is co-founder of the Shelter for Battered Women and Children and the Coalition Against Domestic Violence. She has served on the boards of SERVOL and the National Self-Help Commission. She was a founder member of Junior Achievement and the Trinidad and Tobago Development Foundation, and is a member of the Caribbean Association for Feminist Research, the National Caucus of Women and the Network of NGOs for the Advancement of Women.

With this deep involvement in such organisations feeding her knowledge and concern, she wrote weekly newspaper columns for 15 years on related subjects, and produced and presented a 12-part television series on violence against women and children.

She continued her campaigns when she was appointed an Independent Senator in 1991, lobbying over her 12 years of service for amendments to laws relating to industrial relations, equal opportunities for minorities, children (the Children’s Authority Bill), the Domestic Violence Act, the Sexual Offences Act, and the Cohabitation Act.

Mrs Mahabir-Wyatt was also a founding member of the National Insurance Board, serving as a director from 1972 to 1985, as well as chairing its Personnel, Public Relations and Art Committees.

She joined the Employers’ Consultative Association in 1966, three years later becoming a director with responsibility for industrial relations consultancy, statistical research and publication, government relations, guidance to employers in labour and social security legislation, and workers’ participation in management and supervisory and management training. She served as chief executive officer of the ECA and the Caribbean Employers’ Confederation simultaneously for a period of around 15 years.

She was an employers’ delegate from Trinidad and Tobago to the International Labour Organisation Conference in Geneva for 13 years, and she also served on an advisory committee to the Minister of Labour and Industrial Relations.

Indefatigable campaigner, advocate and reformist that she is, she has established the Caribbean Centre for Human Rights, even as she remains the managing director of PMSL Caribbean Limited, a management consultancy firm focused on human resource management development.