Holness says children should be treated fairly as hair controversy continues
Jamaica’s
Prime Minister Andrew Holness has added his voice to the growing number of online
users who have spoken out following a Supreme Court ruling that a school did
not breach a child’s constitutional rights by denying her access for having
dreadlocks in 2018.
Friday’s ruling caused uproar on social media, prompting many to question what freedoms Jamaicans were celebrating as the island yesterday marked Emancipation Day – the abolition of African enslavement. Many considered the ruling discriminatory and a shot at black hair and hairstyles.
Holness,
in a statement, said “While we await
the written judgement to determine the basis of the ruling issued by our
Supreme Court, which by media reports, have suggested that the child’s
constitutional rights were not breached. This Government does not believe that
there should be any law, which could be interpreted to deny access to a citizen
merely on the basis of their hairstyle. We have, as a rights sensitive
Government, always maintained that our children must not be discriminated
against, nor deprived of their right to an education because of socio-economic
issues – such [as] inability to afford the school fees, or socio-cultural
issues such as their hairstyle.”
He
noted that the Ministry of Education has asserted over the years that schools’
grooming rules must be rights-based, and that no student is to be prevented
from admission or attendance at a public educational institution by reason of
non-conformity with a school rule prohibiting a particular hairstyle in
circumstances where the wearing of that hairstyle by the student is based on
religious or health reasons.
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Holness
continued, “In the present context, this Government believes it is time to
review and amend the Education Act to reflect a modern and culturally inclusive
position that protects our children from being barred from any educational
institution on the basis of wearing locs as an ordinary hairstyle irrespective
of religious reasons”.
He
said he is “acutely aware of the importance of this issue, especially in an era
of great social and political change that is awakening our consciousness of who
we are as a people,” stressing the importance that each child is treated fairly
within the nation’s educational system.
