Latest update April 3rd, 2025 6:51 PM
The right to truth is central to a healthy democracy – GHRA
Kaieteur News – International Human Rights Day 2020 observed globally today, provides an opportune moment to reflect on the relationship between truth, justice and democracy. This was emphasized by the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) in a release it issued yesterday.
According to the GHRA, in Guyana the relationship to truth-telling has always been ambivalent.
The human rights body noted that “Guyanese prefer to fret privately rather than confront everyday public wrong-doing: paying bribes, putting-up with noise nuisance, loud music, and challenging public sector inefficiency…”
“We tell to politicians and our bosses, opinions we think they want to hear, rather than what we believe, reserving that version of the truth for friends and family.”
However, the body noted that while “we clamour for freedom of expression in general, we choose to a large extent not to abide by this principle in our own daily lives by failing to speak freely ourselves.”
“Human rights,” the GHRA stressed, “are best protected when practiced close to home in our individual lives.”
“The ambivalent attitude to truth-telling at the personal level,” the body said, “has more profound and serious effects when it comes to dealing with the periods of intense communal violence Guyana has experienced since the early 1960s.”
“The rigour by which State’s obligation to protect them is in part a reflection of how undemanding individual citizens are,” the statement added.
In this regard, the GHRA pointed to the intensity of political confrontations taking place this year, which created the phenomenon of ‘fake news’ and deliberate intent to mislead both by politicians and sections of the media.
According to the body, the occurrence took its toll on public confidence.
“The upheavals associated with the recent national elections, while much less tumultuous [than other time], were reminders of how little systematic effort has been made to recognize the need for historical clarification, individual and societal healing and the prevention of such future violations. If the absence of communal truth-telling strategies in Guyana is, in fact, a reflection of the widespread individual tendency to avoid truth-telling, the starting point for systematically reviewing our past is to improve our own personal commitment in this regard in our everyday lives. To speak freely, as if we believed in freedom of expression, to act as if we believed in what is guaranteed in our Constitution,” the body added.
Human Rights Day commemorates the day the General Assembly of the UN adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The UDHR is one of the UN’s major achievements as well as the first enunciation of human rights across the world.
This undeniable right achieves several goals including: facilitating the reconciliation process; contributing to the fight against impunity; and strengthens democracy and the rule of law. In promoting the right to truth, States should guarantee broad legal standing in the judicial process to any wronged party and to any person or NGOs having a legitimate interest therein.
Adopted on December 10, 1948, the Declaration stipulates universal values and a shared standard of achievement for everyone in every country. While the Declaration is not a binding document, it inspired over 60 human rights instruments that today make a common standard of human rights. It is the most translated document around the globe available in over 500 languages.
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