E/CN.4/2004/18/Add.1 page 8 services. It also guarantees equal pay for men and women. In December 2000, with a view to preventing racial discrimination and combating incitement to racial hatred, Parliament adopted Act No. 17, which prohibits all individuals and political parties from publishing opinions or engaging in acts intended, or likely, to incite racial hatred or provoke racial violence. 2. Political context 9. In March 2001, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), a predominantly Indo-Guyanese party that has held power since 1992, again won the parliamentary and legislative elections, with the support of allies from the civic movement. Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo, the leader of PPP, was elected President and Samuel Hinds, of the civic movement, Prime Minister. Bharrat Jagdeo had, in 1999, succeeded President Janet Jagan, the widow of the founder of the PPP, Cheddi Jagan, who had been forced to resign for health reasons. The opposition contested the elections, however, accusing the PPP of electoral fraud. The country’s political and social life was disrupted, resulting in a number of outbreaks of serious violence. The riots of 3 July 2002 were in part a result of this protest action: when some 100 demonstrators attacked the Presidential complex, the police reacted, killing two people and arresting 17 other demonstrators, one of whom is still in prison accused of high treason. 3. Economic situation 10. With natural resources such as bauxite, diamonds, gold and timber, and great agricultural potential (rice and sugar cane), Guyana could be a wealthy nation, but the economy has been in recession since the 1980s and the country’s development is in thrall both to the political and social situation and to the structural constraints associated with the global economy (i.e., the shift from a State-run to a free-market economy). Thus, despite the Government’s efforts in the social sphere, which have enabled Guyana to move up from 103rd to 92nd place on the human development index, the country is classed as a highly-indebted poor country, with 35 per cent of the population living in absolute poverty and 19 per cent in critical poverty.3 Women and children are the main victims of poverty and the infant mortality rate is put at 72 per thousand. Poverty affects the interior of the country in particular, and some rural areas along the coast, but there are also pockets of poverty in the towns, including Georgetown. 11. Any understanding of Guyana’s political, economic and social situation in the present must take account of the country’s past. B. A history marked by inter-ethnic tension and conflict 12. Colonization, first by the Dutch (1580-1803) and then by the British (1803-1966), has left Guyanese society deeply scarred by racial stereotyping and ethnic division, the clearest example of the latter being the division between the descendants of Africans and the descendants of Indians. In many ways, the popular expressions now used for members of these groups - “buck man” for Amerindians, “black man” for Afro-Guyanese and “coolie man” for Indo-Guyanese convey the stigmas and prejudices of the country’s past. 13. The farming systems introduced during the colonial period were accompanied by oppression and discrimination against the original inhabitants of the country, the Amerindians, the forced transfer and exploitation of populations of African origin through the slave system,