Innovation Showcase C - Creating Gender Responsive Judiciaries in the Carribean

Speakers:

Anika Gray, Gender Specialist and Regional Project Coordinator, JURIST Project

The Judicial Reform and Institutional Strengthening Project (the JURIST Project) is a $20M, 5-year judicial reform project, which is funded by Global Affairs Canada and being implemented by the Caribbean Court of Justice in 6 CARICOM countries. 

Across the Caribbean region there have been significant achievements in eliminating discrimination embedded in laws and policies. Yet gender inequality persists in the culture and in the practices of those responsible for administering justice. One of the Project’s immediate outcomes is therefore to improve the capacity of courts to deliver gender responsive and customer focused services.  A three-pronged gender strategy was developed to help the Project achieve this outcome. The three prongs are: (1) gender sensitisation training for those who deliver court services; (2) gender focused public education for the users of the court system; and (3) development of gender-responsive court policies and procedures to guide the behaviour of those who work within and use the courts.  

As part of its gender strategy, the Project recently launched Model Guidelines for Sexual Offences Cases in the Caribbean Region, a ground-breaking document and the first of its kind in the Caribbean.  It is a rights-based document that promotes international best practices in the management of sexual offences cases and the treatment of witnesses and survivors of sexual offences.  Importantly, the Project is about to announce the establishment of a specialised sexual offence court, which will operationalise the Model Guidelines.

 The success of the Project’s gender strategy depends on (a) the willingness of justice sector actors to embrace change and (b) ensuring sustainability of Project reforms given the resource constraints faced by most CARICOM territories. This session will examine the lessons learned in promoting behaviour change and achieving sustainability for judicial reform projects focused on fostering gender responsive administration of justice in resource strapped environments.

Biography:

Anika Gray  is an Attorney-at-law with over five years’ experience working on developing and executing programmes on a wide variety of public policy issues requiring both a human rights and gender perspective.  These issues included, providing better access to HIV and AIDS services for vulnerable populations including women and MSMs, advocating for the dismantling of structures that impinge on the sexual rights of vulnerable groups and assisting the government in prosecuting extra-judicial action by members of the security forces.

Anika has a Bachelor of Science in International Relations and Gender Studies and a Bachelor of Laws from the University of the West Indies.  She was called to the Jamaican Bar in 2011 and received her Legal Education Certificate (LEC) from the Norman Manley Law School. She was awarded a 2014 Chevening Scholarship and went on to complete a Master in Public Policy(MPP) at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford.