145th Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly: Nandlall pushes for legislative change to facilitate gender equality in Parliaments

Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister Anil Nandlall, SC, has urged countries to embark on legislative changes to create space for gender equality so that more women can participate in the decision-making level not just in Parliament but across the public sector.
He made his call on Thursday while addressing the 145th Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Assembly being held in Kigali, Rwanda. The theme of the event is “Gender Equality and Gender Sensitive Parliaments as Drivers for a More Resilient and Peaceful World”.

According to Nandlall, who is a senior Government Member of Parliament, Guyana fully embraces the thematic objective of the conference and consequently, pledges its unwavering support to the IPU Assembly as it strives to prosecute this noble ideal.
“I assure you that the Government and country I serve, support equality and equal treatment in all its facets and across every sector of society. Concomitantly, we eschew and strike down the scourge of discrimination whenever it raises its ugly head in any form or fashion,” he stated.
The Attorney General posited that there is simply no rational basis to resist greater gender balance in Parliaments. To do so, he noted, is not only being unfair to women but short-changing oneself and undermining human progress as a whole.
“We have much more work to do. A good start is to push for legislation to be implemented in Member States that would engender greater gender parity in their Parliaments, while we continue to canvass for the removal of all institutional and systematic structures, legislation, policies and programmes which perpetuate gender inequality across the States’ apparatus,” he outlined.

Nandlall went on to point out Rwanda’s track record on this issue, that is, the country in the world with the highest number of women in its Parliament of over 60 per cent. He noted it is no surprise that the country is not only the fastest-growing economy in Africa but in the world as well.
Turning attention to his homeland, the Attorney General noted that while Guyana began this process of gender equality a long time ago, he admitted that it still remains a work in progress.
“Today, one-third of Guyana’s parliamentarians are women. It is a requirement by law that one-third of the list of candidates contesting the General Elections must be women. By our Constitution, the supreme law of Guyana, the State guarantees to every citizen, equal treatment and protection against discrimination, as fundamental rights and freedoms. We have broad-based commissions established by the Constitution such as the Women and Gender Equality Commission and the Rights of the Child Commission, designed to promote issues such as gender parity and to preserve and protect the rights of women and children,” he informed the conference.
Moreover, AG Nandlall outlined that Guyana has a strong network of legislation, policies and programmes that outlaw gender and other forms of discrimination and which protect women and children from ills such as sexual abuse, domestic violence, and trafficking in persons as well as human trafficking.
He added, “In short, we are playing our small part and I wish to assure this Assembly that it has a willing partner in Guyana, and I daresay, the entire Caribbean Region. Let us, therefore resolve to move resolutely to make the theme of this conference a reality. Our failure will certainly result in greater human rights tragedies, societal stagnation and indeed, the global peace for which we strive will continue to elude us.”
Referencing Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, who once said that “peace is not the absence of war but the presence of justice,” the Attorney General argued that inequality in any form, including gender inequality, is the very anthesis of justice.
He noted that without justice, there can be peace nowhere. To this end, he stated that the theme of the IPU conference sells itself. Gender parity in Parliament, in Government and indeed, at every level of public decision-making is indeed an essential component of democracy, social progress, justice, and peace. Without them, he added, comes dictatorship, stagnation, violence, and anarchy.
“Although gender equality is entrenched in the Charter of the United Nations, and forms part of the fundamental guarantees of governing instruments of similar organisations across the globe, and are ensconced in the Constitutions and laws of most countries, the reality paints a starkly different picture, in particular, as it relates to the membership of Parliaments around the world,” he stated.
For example, only three in 193 countries surveyed have a 50 per cent or more female membership in their Parliaments. In fact, 143 countries have below 30 per cent of female membership, while several countries still have no women representation in their Parliaments.
According to AG Nandlall, these are staggering statistics in a world where the female gender outnumbers the male.
“Women are the source of life and the reason for our existence. We are all nurtured and groomed by women. It is said that the housewife of the average worker, in a world of the rising cost of living but stagnant wages, is the world’s greatest economist. Women have repeatedly shown in almost every area of human endeavour that they are equal to men,” the Attorney General asserted.
He further recalled the salutary words of Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, who said “We cannot be satisfied when women perform over two-thirds of the world’s work, produce over half of the food we eat, yet just a meagre tenth of global incomes belong to them… ‘Imihigo’ should serve as our new metric for Rwanda’s commitments to better the lives of our girls and women”.
AG Nandlall is attending the 145th IPU Assembly in Kigali along with Speaker of the National Assembly Manzoor Nadir, Clerk of the National Assembly Sherlock Isaacs, Opposition Member of Parliament Dawn Hastings-Williams, and Table Officer and Personal Assistant to the Clerk Kiana Benjamin.