CAFRA TT commends Gaietry Pargass on national award

THE Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action Trinidad and Tobago (CAFRA TT) has congratulated its member Gaietry Pargass for being awarded the Medal for the Development of Women (Gold) at the recent national awards 2021 ceremony at President's House.

In a press release, it said the country owes Pargass a debt of gratitude for her "path-breaking contributions to women’s and children’s rights over the past 40 years."

Pargass, it said, grew up in Orange Field, central Trinidad, and studied agriculture at UWI, and it was her interactions with women farmers and rural women as a young agricultural officer at the Crop Research Station in Centeno which kindled an early social consciousness of the plight of women.

This led her to study law and human rights, which strengthened her activism with feminist organisations, her commitment to public education and training, her legislative and policy work with government, and her consultancy work with regional and international agencies.

The CAFRA release pointed out that Pargass was a founding and/or active member of three feminist organisations which have shaped and informed the struggle for women’s rights and gender equality in this country and the Caribbean over the past four decades.

The Concerned Women for Progress (CWP), founded in 1980, was the first "second-wave" feminist organisation in the country that fought for women’s rights as workers, and lobbied for laws to address rape, incest and other forms of gender-based violence.

Pargass has also been an active member of CAFRFA TT since its founding in 1985.

In 1988, she co-ordinated the ILSA/CAFRA regional survey of legal services available to women in the Caribbean, as part of a Latin American and Caribbean study. This led to the development of CAFRA’s regional projects on Women’s Rights and the Law, and Gender and Human Rights.

As a human-rights lawyer, Pargass contributed pro bono to CAFRA’s advocacy, public awareness-raising and community interventions on issues including violence against women and children; and gender, human rights and the law.

Pargass was appointed legal adviser in the Ministry of Social Development from 1991–1996. On returning to government after years of teaching and consultancy work, she was appointed legal consultant in the Ministry of Gender, Youth and Child Development in 2012, a position she also held in the Office of the Prime Minister (Gender and Child Affairs).

Since 2017, she has been a senior legal adviser.

In these capacities, Pargass brought to bear her knowledge and understanding of feminist issues from her activism at the national, regional and international levels.

Her technical support to government ministers and senior officials, among others, has contributed to the development of key laws and policies on women’s rights, gender equality, gender-based violence, and children’s rights and protection.

Pargass has also served on various Cabinet-appointed and inter-ministerial committees tasked with addressing gender equality, child development and protection, and juvenile crime and delinquency.

During the 1990s, Pargass represented CAFRA at key UN world conferences. She attended the Preparatory Committee meeting of the UN World Conference on Human Rights in Geneva in 1992, which first articulated the now commonly held concept of women’s rights as human rights.

She was a member of the team convened by the southern feminist network Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) to attend the UN World Summit for Social Development, held in Copenhagen in March 1995. She also served as CAFRA’s representative on the TT government’s delegation at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995.

Her role as the local counterpart attorney for Indravani Ramjattan, and the historic ruling of the Court of Appeal in accepting "battered woman syndrome" as a defence, set a precedent and has contributed to a deeper appreciation of the phenomenon of domestic violence both in TT society and globally.

In addition, she has served as a part-time lecturer in law and social work, and human rights law at UWI.