The United Belize Advocacy Movement has been going to the OAS attending Latin American and Caribbean meeting since 2007 shaping the Coalition declaration statement and lobbying CARICOM leaders to support or dialogue on Sexaul citizenship in the Caribbean. As a coalition we have been able to pass five resolutions between 2008 to 2013 with lead support of Heartland International. We met at the Royal Palace in Guatemala City for two days to strategize on the coalition declarative statement and plot out our course of action for the week and next year:
drove as a group to Antigua for the OAS Civil Society Dialogue, meeting
with other coalitions like Drugs, Sexual and Reproductive Rights
Campaign to chat about strategy and at a meeting in Antigua where we were able
to meeting not only the campaign, but the US Alternative Mission
Representative Mayra Ahern to chat about language access, and
providing technical assistance to help CARICOM countries understand the
needs of its L.G.B.T citizens better. This meeting took place in
Antigua,Guatemala on June 2nd, 2013.
I must report however, about the first moments at the Civil Society
Dialogue on June 3rd with accredited Civil Society members and their
engagement with a Venezuelan politician who was allowed to speak in a
Civil Society space seen on the left that started a a loud chant against his presence.
yelling , ” insufficiente, tiempo a compania” as a chant. This fellow, on the left, started the chant, out of concern that the politician was taking
up the time of Civil Society in an unfair way. The LGBTTI Coalition
realized that he was right and we began to chant Civil Society
Dialogue. The result was that the gentleman left, but not before the
group of 20 left in protest that the presence of the gentleman meant
that the spirit of Civil Society dialogue was lost. Well! that did not
stop there, as the English speaking Caribbean was isolated from bad
translation services and invisibility during the question and answer
session with the Secretary General. So the head of CARIFLAGS Secretariat
Colin Robinson of Trinidad and Tobago wrote a sign that said, “English
Questions too” which I promptly held up till the Secretary General saw
it and pointed out to the moderator to call on us.
Representative spokeswoman for CARIFLAGS Guyana, Zenita Nicholson, spoke on our behalf and asked two questions one refer to the need for language access during the meeting and to response to our question given to him in Bolvia to note any basic follow-up action. We still did not get an answer and so Colin Robinson, grabbed the microphone and respectfully asked that he answers our concerns. It was our proudest moment as a region. Though the Secretary General said alot, but said nothing, at least he answered us.
In 7 years of engaging the process at the OAS, I have never been riveted
by Civil Society assertiveness of its space, exercising their right to
expression, drawing lines of rights protection, not restriction at the
Civil Society negotiation session to determine who would be the five
Civil Society speakers. At this session the International Director of External Affairs was forced at the end to take the issue to his boss. What was interesting was that the Fundamentalist Catholics group was given a space to speak, but not before they pissed off Feminist groups, Sexual and Reproductive health activists, anti-abortion groups and the Afro-descendants groups who discovered they were racists as well and we would have none of it. In addition, The LGBTTI coalition was told by the fundamentalist group who is founder of the Family of the American Foundation ,Mecedes Arzu Wilson ( she is the former President of Guatemala Sister and wife of a US Republican) that they did not want to talk to us. May I say that set off activists in the room that pissed off the Coalition who pulled up a chair and we immediately started to dialogue. Three long hours of talking took place, of which, one and a half hour was a shouting match. I realize we weren’t getting any where, so I intervened and got Mercedes to agree that violence against gay people was wrong and the need to uphold dignity was important. It was Zenita of Guyana who stayed the course and found out that Mercedes believe that a there is no such thing as a mother life being endangered by a baby, in fact she said,” that does not exist.” Jamaican-Jaevion Nelson added his two sense as well. What I did was to learn her name, and who she was through a book she wrote where she truly believes that contraceptives causes cancer, that gay men started AIDS that condoms are not good. It was riveting to learn as well that her group trained sisters across the Caribbean including our own Seeds for Life group located in Benque. We learned too that she had a congress representative in Guatemala and so she would eventually get her way. Not before realizing how manipulative they were, they claimed in an audience of almost 300 people that we intimidated them that they had consensus on a document to make their statement as speaker. Well, we immediately discredited that claim that as a coalition we had not agreed on any document.
Their declaration, scene here about the Family is cause for concern for its what fundamentalist have been pushing at the UN level here Russian was able to push a resolution on traditional values that goes against the rights of ordinary Citizens. As a network of the Caribbean CARIFLAGS support Sexual and Reproductive Rights and showed its support by raise the leaflet as their group read their concerns.
