PROFESSOR Rex Nettleford has urged human rights advocates who may regard the recent Privy Council ruling on the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) as a victory, to remember the historical and societal context of the ruling.

They need, he said, to factor in the reality of colonialism and slavery which denied the most basic human rights to the majority through laws imposed by overseas and local rulers.

“The template of the rule of law guiding our social and civil relations must indeed be safeguarded. But one should never give up the right to ask whose law and in whose interest the law, or laws, determining the rules of governance are determined,” said Nettleford, speaking on day two of the two-day human rights symposium held in Mandeville.

“That such rules must reflect or relate to the context in which the text is articulated goes without question. Otherwise the laws governing slavery might well have remained with us to this day.”

Noting that “the Privy Council was not set up by a referendum and was not entrenched in the Jamaican Constitution”, Nettleford said its “replacement could not have meant its dictation to a sovereign nation what it should replace it with”.

“But I speak from a political point of view convinced that our independence remains fluid in our quest for certitude and suggest that continuing dynamic negotiation must be expected, and handled, without denying to ourselves the responsibility to find form and give purpose to that most important of rights in the historical sense, which is to demonstrate to ourselves and the planet that the likes of us are fit to rule and to govern, to use the demeaning language of Colonialism, which denied to an entire aggregation of souls, not just to individuals, the basic and inalienable right ‘to be’,” he said.

Earlier this month, the Privy Council, on a case mounted by the Jamaica Labour Party and civil society groups, ruled as unconstitutional, the route taken by the Jamaican government to establish the CCJ as its final court.

While the government could end appeals to the UK-based court by a simple parliamentary majority, the law lords held that it required special procedures to entrench the CCJ as a court superior to Jamaica’s Court of Appeal.

The implication is that establishment of the CCJ as Jamaica’s final court will require either a two-thirds majority in both houses of Parliament and/or the winning vote in a referendum.

Nettleford, however, said despite “a similar shameful position taken by many educated Jamaicans, including some in the legal profession”, he sensed “an understanding of this among persons in the political opposition, hence the mutual call for discussion on both sides of the House to come to the balance that the claim for rights will always demand of claimants”.

“For, if life is not to be brutish, nasty and short, there must be a collective commitment to conscious and normative constitutionalism,” he said.

Nettleford, known for political and socio-cultural studies, added that the protection of individual rights must be considered within the broader context of the society that Jamaicans want to craft.

“We are not only building nations, as I have repeatedly affirmed, we are also shaping societies – a far more daunting task that will be achieved only on the basis of education for citizenship and for meaningful participation in what has come to be called civil society, as well as the fostering of a particular kind of stability that will ensure for our society creative rather than disintegrative tension,” said Nettleford.

The symposium on human rights, Febraury 22-23, was hosted jointly by the Northern Caribbean University and the Ministry of Justice on the NCU campus in Mandeville.

– bellanfanted@jamaicaobserver.com