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94. The Government should demonstrate support for educational and cultural projects
established by institutions and organizations within the Afro-Guyanese community and
facilitate funding for those projects.
95. Restrictions on the media and freedom of expression should be lifted and legal
definitions of the offences of “treason” should be evaluated as against international
standards of freedom of expression. The Government should consider whether having the
President also holding the portfolio of Minister of Communication has a chilling effect on
freedom of expression in the current highly polarized context of Guyana.
96. A lack of disaggregated statistical data in all sectors hampers detailed and rigorous
analysis of the relative situations of different ethnic groups in Guyana. Disaggregated data
should be collected on a voluntary and confidential basis, and analysed to reveal the extent
of inequality and to enable informed policy decisions. Such data should be used to fashion
aggressive targeted affirmative action programmes to address the economic, educational
and social inequalities that exist in the Afro-Guyanese communities comparative to those in
the Indo-Guyanese communities.
97. There is a lack of information on the impact of the anti-discrimination provisions of
the Constitution and legislation. The Government should establish a programme to
monitor the extent to which these provisions have been used as the basis for criminal or
other legal proceedings and what the outcomes have been. There should also be a
data-driven evaluation of the Office of the Ombudsman and the Ethnic Relations
Commission. That should lead to a re-evaluation of whether additional, more effective
mechanisms should be created to tackle aggressively ethnic discrimination. This should be
part of a national plan of action as called for in the Durban Programme of Action.
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