The Pitcairn Islands are found in the South Pacific and are made up of Pitcairn, Henderson, Ducie and Oeno Islands with Pitcairn being the only inhabited island with around 50 people. Many of the Islanders are descended from the mutineers of the Bounty and their Tahitian companions who settled there in 1790 and its first constitution was established in 1838.
Pitcairn’s new Constitution (adopted in 2010), has for the first time, introduced a chapter on individual rights. This chapter includes most of the rights found in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), even though at the time of adoption, the ECHR has not yet been extended to Pitcairn.
In addition to the ICCPR applying in Pitcairn, other human rights treaties have been extended to it; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Convention against Torture (CAT) and Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination(CERD). Islanders have expressed a wish for the ECHR to be extended to them and its Governor’s office has commissioned a compliance exercise of Pitcairn’s national laws with the provisions of the ECHR to facilitate this process.
Project activities 2008-2010
An initial 9 day human rights awareness training programme was delivered to Pitcairn in September 2009. 27 Islanders participated in the training programme and 7 school children attended the session held at the school. A second round of human rights awareness training is planned for June 2011. The project is also proposing to include the development of a national human rights action plan for Pitcairn during the forthcoming human rights training programme.
Under the technical assistance facility, the project has provided the Governor’s office with a list of experts with sound knowledge of the ECHR for their project to undertake a compliance exercise of Pitcairn national laws with the provisions of the ECHR. During the first human rights training programme, the trainers provided technical advice on the inclusion of rights within school policy to the teacher at Island school. The project has also provided its views on the chapter on human rights in the draft Constitution – this included a comparative analysis of provisions found in other Territories’ Constitutions. More recently, the project has received a request for assistance with the inclusion of rights in grievance procedures which is currently being drawn up and will be providing this assistance during the forthcoming human rights training.
The project has liaises with an Island Group which is chaired by Simon Young, Deputy Mayor of Pitcairn. He can be contacted by email thebubuz@yahoo.com.