GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) - A Guyana women's organisation yesterday hailed a bill that would raise the minimum legal age for consensual sex from 13 to 16.

The bill amends an 1893 law that allowed the children of indentured East Indians working on British-run sugar plantations to marry as young as 13 in keeping with tradition.

The practice has virtually disappeared in the former British colony, but the law opened the door to what would now be considered statutory rape in many other countries.
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has recommended that Guyana change the law, said Human Services Minister Bibi Shaddick, who introduced the bill to parliament on Monday.

"We know for sure that it is a step in the right direction. We have been urging that the age of consent be raised," said Karen Desouza of Red Thread, a leading women's organisation based in the South American country of 700,000 residents.
The need to raise the legal age for consensual sex became a topic of national debate in May when the media chronicled the plight of a mother whose 13 year-old daughter had moved in with a businessman in his 40s.

The man and girl both refused to listen to pleas from relatives and human rights organisations to terminate their relationship.
A High Court judge placed the girl in the care of the government's youth ministry, and she was sent to a correctional centre for troubled teenagers. Since he had not broken the law, the man was not charged.

The government has promised to include a clause dealing with sexual relations between consenting minors, said Merle McCormack of the Guyana Human Rights Association.
The unicameral 65-member National Assembly will debate the bill at an unspecified date in December. Earlier this year, legislators defined a child as anyone under 18 years-old.

The legal age of consent is 16 in many of the Caribbean Community's 15 countries.

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