Get rid of colonial era laws – Harvard paper

Oct 29, 2019 News

Guyana’s legal books are replete with laws placed there by its former colonial masters. While those countries are now developed and have had much more access to resources needed to identify and remove those obstacles to justice from their books, former colonial servants like Guyana have lagged.
Some of these laws are seen as oppressive and/or downright absurd. One of those, in the Summary Jurisdiction (Offences) Act forbids someone to place a fish in any body of water that may flow into private land.
Other colonial era laws, including those on wandering and cross-dressing, have been heavily criticised for facilitating harassment and persecution of youth, women and other minorities.
The Republic of Rwanda has been progressive enough to remove a series of its own colonial laws. It has been widely reported that the African nation last month struck down more than a thousand colonial laws from its legal books.
These laws were placed there by its former German and Belgian masters. The laws had been enacted between 1885 and 1962, and the Rwandan Parliament resolved to scrap the laws because, according to the State’s Minister for Constitutional and Legal Affairs, they were enacted to serve colonizers.
One of the scrapped laws held by the African nation provided for separate living areas and neighbourhoods for white people and Rwandans, and another allowed the donation of land to the church.
The Minister is quoted as saying that the move to scrap the laws “finally means that we are and will be governed by laws made by us for us.”
A paper was published in the Harvard International Law Journal, titled “The Persistence of Colonial Laws: Why Rwanda is Ready to Remove Outdated Legal Barriers to Health, Human Rights, and Development.”
The writers – Agnes Binagwaho, Richard Freeman, and Gabriela Sarriera – said it was important that, in matters of social justice, human rights and due process, no national of that country should ever be subjected to a decree by a colonial governor.
It was noted that some persons may even attempt to use these colonial era statutes to oppress others, and that no one should be subjected to the indignity of that.
The writers stated that the persistence of colonial statutes can have certain effects that erode good governance, which also justifies taking action to definitively remove such statutes and minimize those effects.
It posited that whether they are enforced or not, laws influence behaviour. This is evident in witchcraft laws that are on Guyana’s books.
Those laws specifically single out ‘Obeah’, which is constituted by a series of spiritual practices developed by enslaved Africans of the West Indies, descended from African traditional religions. ‘Obeah’ is today seen as a malevolent form of witchcraft, instead of a legitimate religion.
The paper’s authors go on to argue that the persistence of colonial era laws may even inhibit Government officials from making much-needed reforms out of fear of obstructing certain aspects of those laws.
It states that the persistence of such statutes weakens the rule of law, “inviting authorities to pick and choose which laws to implement, and ultimately allowing them to determine when to substitute their own rules in place of rules they consider outdated.”
Finally, the authors posited that a post-colonial nation can only restore its full sovereignty once it frees its legal system from undemocratic colonial remnants that hinder progress, and it is hoped that, this country would inspire other formerly colonised countries to “dig deep into their legal traditions” and consider doing the same.

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Get rid of colonial era laws – Harvard paper

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