Wednesday, April 29 – The Commonwealth Foundation’s Human Rights Coordinator for the Caribbean region Ms. Marilyn Conolly will visit the Territory from April 30 to May 1.

During her visit, Ms. Conolly will call on His Excellency the Governor, the Premier, Deputy Premier, Deputy Governor, Leader of the Opposition and the Complaints Commissioner. 

She will hold discussions with several affiliated departments and stakeholders such as the Attorney General, Director of Public Prosecutions, Law Reform Commissioner, Her Majesty’s Prison, Royal Virgin Islands Police Force, Departments of Immigration and Labour, Office of Gender Affairs, the Sister Islands Coordinator and the Magistracy.  In the private sector domain, there will be consultations with the BVI Bar Association and local constitutional experts.

Ms. Conolly, who is based at the Cayman Islands Law School, has extensive experience in senior level public administration and social development.  She has also been a member of a number of national bodies including a national human rights commission and has a master’s degree in sociology. 

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, United Kingdom, has identified and authorised the Commonwealth Foundation to spearhead the technical support needed for the establishment and early sustenance of the Human Rights Commission envisaged in the Virgin Islands Constitution Order, 2007.

This capacity-building project is being carried out in Anguilla, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Montserrat, Pitcairn, St. Helena and its dependencies and Turks and Caicos Islands.  Funding is being provided by the Department of International Development, U.K.

Attorney General Honourable Kathleen Quartey told the Department of Information and Public Relations that Government is moving forward with its human rights agenda, which is in keeping with the United Kingdom’s governance programme for overseas territories.

The Attorney General said, “during the months ahead, the consultative process is expected to be informed by the processes employed by the Law Reform Commission in its civil society engagement, with visits to the other sister islands.  Media support will be guided and coordinated by the Government Information Service (GIS).  All these steps are designed to make the citizenry feel a part of the process to enable them to take ownership of and repose confidence in the commission.”

“There is a civil society and wider, government consultative process to begin in the coming months before we would be on the way to actually establishing the Human Rights Commission,” she said.

The Attorney General added that “last year, the chambers engaged a consultant to assist with a draft model law establishing the commission.  The collaborative product was fashioned on the tenets of the Commonwealth Secretariat’s best practice for Human Rights Commissions and various appropriate legislations of the Virgin Islands, within the scope allowed by Chapter two of the Constitution.”

This visit will be the first of a number of visits that the Commonwealth Foundation is expected to make to the Territory.  The governing law should be passed this year with the BVI Human Rights Commission being established in the last quarter of the year.

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Background Information

The Virgin Islands Constitution Order, 2007 provided for a chapter on “Fundamental Rights and Freedoms of the Individual”, popularly known as a Bill of Rights.  Some twenty-odd Rights are enunciated to protect the individual, but all of which are subject to the Territory’s overriding interests of security, the wider public interest and the competing rights of others.  To enable these Rights to flourish and be observed, provision is made in the Constitution for an oversight body, namely, a Human Rights Commission, to be established in the Virgin Islands.  Such a commission would be an independent body within the Governor’s Group.