I had never thought I would be doing an internship at YUVA, but now that I have done it, I don’t regret it. I was impressed by the number of projects and initiatives they take to help people, especially young people. It’s nice to see an organisation committed to achieving its goals. So I didn’t hesitate to apply for an internship there.
I found out about YUVA on the Internet. I was researching internship opportunities. I finally came across the YUVA website and saw that the organisation had an internship programme, which immediately piqued my interest, and of course, I took a chance. I got a response very quickly, and it was great. At first, I wasn’t sure what to expect and if I would feel lost. But as the course progressed, I was immediately guided, and I knew right away that it would go well.
Women in Mauritius make up more than half of the population, yet we see very few women in politics or the national assembly. Women are still more educated and free to participate in politics, so why the under-representation? To understand the situation better, it is necessary to look at the elements contributing to this problem.
Men dominate politics, but it is not exclusively a male domain. To say today that politics is a field only for men would be an outdated statement. Women are just as capable as men of being political and contributing to the good of society. Indeed, we live in a modern world where women are successful in education, are independent, and some laws enforce their rights, but this does not mean that the number of women in politics has increased. In Mauritius, the men hold power and make the decisions. It is the patriarchal culture that affects the position of women politicians.
This article ranks the top Mauritian politicians in history. These politicians have left their mark in Mauritius and still maintain status and are still discussed in the present.
These politicians have dominated the political scene, and their careers speak volumes about their dedication to politics. It is important to remember that politics in Mauritius is not a smooth-running environment where politicians are often criticized and face many controversies. Therefore, this list is based on the impact and degree of influence these politicians have had or still have.
Human rights are not basic rights. They are fundamental rights that individuals possess simply because they are humans. History showed how important they were, and it is undeniable that they still carry a lot of importance.
Over the years, Mauritius has had many initiatives to promote and enforce human rights. However, human rights issues persist, suggesting that more effort is needed. This article explains the situation of human rights in Mauritius.
World Population Day, which seeks to focus attention on the urgency and importance of population issues, was established by the then-Governing Council of the United Nations Development Programme in 1989, an outgrowth of the interest generated by the Day of Five Billion, which was observed on 11 July 1987. The theme of World Population Day 2022is“A world of 8 billion: Towards a resilient future for all – Harnessing opportunities and ensuring rights and choices for all”.
In 2011, the world reached a population of 7 billion. This year, the number will hit 8 billion, prompting the attendant responses. Some will marvel at the advancements in health that have extended lifespans, reduced maternal mortality and child mortality and given rise to vaccine development in record time. Others will tout technological innovations that have eased our lives and connected us more than ever. Still, others will herald gains in gender equality.
The right to education is enshrined in article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The declaration calls for free and compulsory elementary education. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted in 1989, goes further to stipulate that countries shall make higher education accessible to all.
When it adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in September 2015, the international community recognized that education is essential for the success of all 17 of its goals. Sustainable Development Goal 4, in particular, aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” by 2030.
The unprecedented COVID-19 crisis has resulted in major social, political and legal challenges globally. As states around the world adopt emergency measures to address the crisis, it is critical that they continue to uphold the rule of law, protect and respect international standards and basic principles of legality, and the right to access justice, remedies and due process.
We celebrate Nelson Mandela International Day every year to shine light on the legacy of a man who changed the 20th century and helped shape the 21st.
This is a moment for all to renew with the values that inspired Nelson Mandela. Absolute determination. A deep commitment to justice, human rights and fundamental freedoms. A profound belief in the equality and dignity of every woman and man. A relentless engagement for dialogue and solidarity across all lines and divisions. Nelson Mandela was a great statesman, a fierce advocate for equality, the founding father of peace in South Africa.
MAPS is an organisation established in 2012, headquartered in Pakistan and working in the sectors of Human Rights, Education, Community Welfare, Women and Youth Empowerment, UN SDGs, especially on peace promotion and transgender rehabilitation projects.
Report prepared by Christiana Uzoaru Okorie, YUVA Project Writer
Introduction
In Africa and some parts of the world, gender stereotypes inherent in the culture of the people, defines women and men in opposite ways, create limitations to both women and men and legitimise unequal power relation. Gender stereotyping refers to the way in which a society expects women and men to behave and the specific roles women and men are expected to play the society. This cultural phenomenon has resulted in gender inequity in most African societies and contributed to non-attainment of sustainable development. Gender inequity inherent in society is a denial of Human Rights and is of great concern to sustainable development. Continue reading “Achieving Gender Equity for Sustainable Development through Environmental Adult Education in Mauritius”
According to estimates, a total number of 329 cases of HIV/AIDS cases were detected in the year 2016 in which 319 cases were Mauritians and 10 cases were foreigners. The yearly positivity rates of HIV recorded seem to be 0.36% for the year 2016, which concludes that the total number of people living with HIV/AIDS in Mauritius is 6671. Statistics clearly indicate that men have the highest prevalence of HIV as out of the 6671 cases 5061 are men and 1610 are women. Since 1987 Mauritius has reported approximately 953 deaths due to HIV. Continue reading “The Situation of HIV/AIDS in Mauritius”
Mauritius is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking. Secondary school-age girls and, in fewer numbers, younger girls from all areas of the country, including from Rodrigues Island, are induced into prostitution, often by their peers, family members, or by businessmen offering other forms of employment.
NGOs report girls also are sold into prostitution by family members or forced into the sex trade in exchange for food and shelter. Taxi drivers provide transportation and allegedly introduce girls and clients. Girls and boys whose mothers engage in prostitution reportedly are vulnerable to being forced into prostitution at a young age. Some women addicted to drugs are forced into prostitution. In recent years, small numbers of Mauritian adults have been identified as labor trafficking victims in the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Canada. Malagasy women transit Mauritius en route to employment as domestic workers in the Middle East, where they often are subsequently subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking. Women from Rodrigues Island are subjected to forced labor in domestic service in Mauritius.
In previous reporting periods, Cambodian fishermen were subjected to forced labor on fishing boats in Mauritius’s territorial waters. Mauritius’ manufacturing and construction sectors employ approximately 30,000 foreign migrant workers from India, China, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Madagascar, some of whom are subjected to forced labor.
The Government of Mauritius does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so.
During the reporting period, the government maintained strong efforts to identify and provide protective services to child victims of sex trafficking and continued to conduct extensive public awareness campaigns to prevent child sex trafficking and reduce the demand for commercial sex acts involving children. However, there remained a general lack of understanding among law enforcement of trafficking crimes outside the realm of child sex trafficking, despite increasing evidence that other forms of trafficking exist in Mauritius, including the forced labor of adults. The government failed to identify or provide any protective services to adult victims and did not make any tangible efforts to prevent the trafficking of adults during the reporting period.
Recommendations for Mauritius
Use anti-trafficking legislation to investigate and prosecute trafficking offenses and convict and punish trafficking offenders, including in cases involving forced labor or adult women exploited in forced prostitution; provide law enforcement officials, magistrates, prosecutors, social workers, and labor inspectors with specific anti-trafficking training so officials can effectively identify victims, investigate cases, and refer victims to appropriate care; increase coordination between law enforcement entities, NGOs, and international organizations on cases involving foreign trafficking victims; establish procedures to guide officials in the proactive identification of victims of trafficking among at-risk populations, including women in prostitution and migrant workers; create an inter-ministerial committee to increase coordination among relevant government entities and facilitate the government’s overall trafficking efforts; develop a national action plan to combat trafficking and allocate sufficient funding to implement the plan; increase the number of labor inspectors responsible for monitoring the employment of migrant workers; and conduct a national awareness campaign on all forms of trafficking.
Prosecution
The Mauritian government decreased anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts during the reporting period. The Combating of Trafficking in Persons Act of 2009 prohibits all forms of trafficking of adults and children and prescribes penalties of up to 15 years’ imprisonment for convicted offenders. In addition, the Child Protection Act of 2005 prohibits all forms of child trafficking and prescribes punishment of up to 15 years’ imprisonment; the Judicial Provisions Act of 2008 increased the maximum prescribed punishment for child trafficking offenses to 30 years’ imprisonment. All of the aforementioned penalties are sufficiently stringent and commensurate with those prescribed for other serious crimes, such as rape. During the reporting period, the government reported six investigations related to child sex trafficking, which resulted in the prosecution of five alleged traffickers; all five prosecutions remained pending at the close of the reporting period. This is a decrease from the previous reporting period, when the government initiated seven prosecutions and obtained seven convictions in child sex trafficking cases.
The government has never reported any prosecutions of cases involving adult victims of sex trafficking. It has never taken any law enforcement action against labor trafficking offenses, including forced labor on fishing boats in Mauritius’ territorial waters and forced labor of migrant workers in the construction and manufacturing industries. Although the Mauritian Police Force included training on trafficking to approximately 200 new police recruits as part of their basic training requirements, with the exception of cases involving child sexual exploitation, there remained a general lack of understanding of trafficking among law enforcement. The government did not report any investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of government officials complicit in human trafficking during the reporting period.
Protection
The government sustained strong efforts to protect child sex trafficking victims, but failed to identify or provide adequate protective services to victims of other forms of trafficking. The government identified seven child sex trafficking victims during the reporting period, a slight decrease from the 12 victims identified in 2012. The Minors Brigade systematically referred all cases of identified children in prostitution to the Child Development Unit (CDU) of the Ministry of Gender Equality, Child Development, and Family Welfare for assistance. CDU officials referred an unknown number of abused and exploited children to two NGOs running multipurpose shelters for care. It also encouraged the placement of trafficking victims in foster homes for long-term shelter. The government provided victims with medical and psychological assistance in public clinics regardless of whether they resided in a shelter, in foster care, or with relatives. Children victimized in prostitution were accompanied to the hospital by a child welfare officer, and police worked in conjunction with these officers to obtain statements from the children. The government encouraged child victims’ assistance in the investigation and prosecution of trafficking crimes.
Identified victims were not reported to have been incarcerated inappropriately, fined, or otherwise penalized solely for unlawful acts committed as a direct result of being trafficked. The government failed to identify or provide any services to adult victims of sex trafficking or labor trafficking. Due to the lack of understanding of human trafficking among law enforcement, some adult victims of forced prostitution and forced labor may have been penalized for unlawful acts committed as a direct result of being trafficking. For example, law enforcement officers and prosecutors generally did not investigate whether adult women were involuntarily engaging in prostitution. Additionally, under Mauritian law, migrant workers who strike are considered to be in breach of their employment contracts and can be deported at the will of their employers. Some migrant workers who gathered to protest abuses relating to their employment were deported during the reporting period; these deportations took place without conducting comprehensive investigations or screenings to identify if the individuals were victims of forced labor. The 2009 anti-trafficking law specifically provides legal alternatives, such as temporary residency, to removal to countries in which the trafficking victims would face retribution or hardship.
Prevention
The government sustained strong efforts to prevent the sex trafficking of children and reduce the demand for commercial sex acts, but demonstrated weak efforts to prevent other forms of trafficking. The Police Family Protection Unit and the Minors Brigade continued extensive public awareness campaigns on child abuse and child rights at schools and community centers that included information on the dangers and consequences of engaging in or facilitating child prostitution. The Ministry of Tourism and Leisure also distributed pamphlets warning tourism industry operators of the consequences of engaging in or facilitating child prostitution. However, the government does not have an inter-ministerial coordinating body or a national action plan dedicated to combating all forms of trafficking. The government did not conduct any awareness campaigns relating to other forms of trafficking and did not make any discernible efforts to reduce the demand for forced labor during the reporting period. The Ministry of Labor, Industrial Relations and Employment (MOL) is required to approve all employment contracts before migrant laborers can enter the country. However, reports indicate many migrant laborers enter the country with incomplete contracts or contracts that have not been translated into languages that the workers understand. Additionally, the MOL’s Special Migrant Workers Unit, which is responsible for directly monitoring and protecting all migrants workers and conducting routine inspections of all migrant workers’ employment sites, was staffed by only four inspectors; this number of inspectors is severely inadequate, as there are approximately 37,000 migrant workers currently employed in Mauritius.
YUVA begins a journey in working towards the eradication of human trafficking in Mauritius.
Source information retrieved from Trafficking in Persons Report 2014
Human Rights Day is observed every year on 10 December. It commemorates the day on which, in 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 1950, the Assembly passed resolution 423 (V), inviting all States and interested organisations to observe 10 December of each year as Human Rights Day.
The two Covenants, together with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, form the International Bill of Human Rights, setting out the civil, political, cultural, economic, and social rights that are the birth right of all human beings.
“Our Rights. Our Freedoms. Always.” aims to promote and raise awareness of the two Covenants on their 50th anniversary. The year-long campaign revolves around the theme of rights and freedoms — freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear — which underpin the International Bill of Human Rights are as relevant today as they were when the Covenants were adopted 50 years ago. For more this year’s theme and the year-long campaign, see the website of the UN Human Rights office.
The two Covenants were adopted by the UN General Assembly on 16 December 1966, and entered into force in 1976, after a sufficient number of countries had ratified them.
Each of the Covenants is monitored by a committee of experts, who review the progress of States parties to the treaty. They also hear individual complaints and assess if States need to remedy the situation.
Along with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the two Covenants form the International Bill of Human Rights. which sets out the rights that are the birthright of all human beings.
On Thursday 5th of November 2015, the ‘Dis-Moi’ (Droit Humains Océan Indien) has stepped up its efforts to combat human trafficking, an issue that has greatly been affecting our island.
Specifically, ‘Dis-Moi’, in collaboration with Justice & Equity and a number of development partners has strived to strengthen its ability to combat human trafficking. For this purpose ‘Dis-Moi’ is commencing to implement the island project “Strengthening Criminal Justice Responses to Human Trafficking in Mauritius” which shall be for a duration of one year-pilot project, based on financial support from various Ministries amidst the Mauritius Police Force and the Media Trust of Mauritius.
The project aims at (1) developing an anti-human trafficking law; (2) undertaking capacity- building of legal and law enforcement officials, and victim service providers; (3) increasing cooperation of various professionals and NGOs on human trafficking; (4) raising awareness on human trafficking; and (5) improving the capacity for victim referrals and access to legal assistance.
The workshop held was aimed at educating and raising awareness among legal and law enforcement officials and those who provide assistance to victims. Twenty-Eight participants including attorneys, lawyers, local police, local prosecutors, members of various Ministries, members of Media Trust, Members of Human Rights, Women’s Union, members of NGOs and Syndicalists of the CTSP attended the one day workshop.
Opening remarks were made by Deputy Mayor of Port Louis, Mr. Loic Dick, President of Media Trust Mr. Linsay Riviere, Syndicalist of the CTSP Mrs. Jane Ragoo, Deputy Chairman of the Human Rights Commission Mr. Hervé Lassemillante and Director of ‘Dis-Moi’, Mr. Lindley Couronne. The speakers warned about the dangers of human trafficking in Mauritius, their expectations for the workshop and what they wish for participants to gain from this workshop.
Each session of the workshop was led by trainers who are officials from International experts on Human Rights & Justice (National & International presentation on Human Traffic), Legal representatives amidst Me. Indranee Boolell-Bhoyrul (Legal aspects and existing laws in Mauritius), President of the CEDEM Mrs. Rita Venkatasawmy (Child Prostitution in Mauritius), Professors from the University of Mauritius amidst Dr. Ganess Dirpal & Dr. (Ms.) Anjali Bungaleea (Immigrants in Mauritius – Bangladeshi), and National Police who have been selected as part of the Core Trainers Group.
During workshop, the participants’ analyzed local case studies and assessed whether each case was human trafficking. In aiming to increase the awareness and participation, the trainers departed from the typical teaching style by actively engaging with the participants, soliciting their views on issues and asking for answers.
Closing remarks were made by Mr. Lindley Couronne, Director of ‘Dis-Moi’. The speakers expressed their appreciation towards all participating parties and their hope that selected voluntary members of the public will apply the information learned through the workshop to prevent incidents of human trafficking while also assisting victims of human trafficking in Mauritius based on a pilot project for duration of one year.
Report of workshop submitted to the MSIEE on: Friday 6th of November 2015.
