CIVIL society organisations from across the country will be holding a one-day workshop tomorrow as part of a committed effort aimed at brainstorming approaches to improve racial harmony and address ethnic tensions in Guyana.
Under the theme ‘Improving Race Relations’, the workshop is being sponsored by the Forum on Effectiveness and Solidarity (FES) and will be held at the Methodist Outreach Centre on High Street, Georgetown.
A statement from the Coordinating Committee said participants will determine the agenda of the workshop at the beginning of the day which is similar to the approach used by the FES when it held its first workshop last year.
According to the Coordinating Committee, the workshop will then transform itself into a ‘marketplace of ideas’ in which participants attend whichever discussions interest them and new topics which emerge as the day progresses are added to the agenda. Known as ‘Open Space Technology’, the committee asserted that “this democratic and participatory approach is suited to exploring a wide variety of issues”.
It said a preparatory document has been circulated proposing four areas in which action is required to improving ethnic and racial harmony, framework values and principles, legal and policy formation, social cohesion, and leadership strategies.
“A framework of civil values is required to challenge unethical behaviour, notably the habit of ascribing racial motivation to things we disagree with and demanding standards of behaviour from other races that we do not apply to ourselves,” the committee stated.
“Laws and policy formation activity (which rarely involve the general public) serve to embody and strengthen national consensus on how certain goals will be achieved;” it said.
The committee also posited that social cohesion involves creating ways of doing things that are both efficient and, at the same time, sensitive to diversity. In this regard, the it said that Guyana, throughout the independence era has been dominated by the cult of ‘The Leader’, at huge social cost to society.
It said that encouraging leadership and initiative at all levels of the society is urgently needed.
The Coordinating Committee of the workshop comprises the Amerindian People’s Association (APA); the Clerical and Commercial Workers Union (CCWU); the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA); the Guyana Postal and Telecoms Workers’ Union (GPTWU); Red Thread; Rights of Children (ROC); Youth in Development and the YMCA-Linden. The GHRA is providing administrative services for the workshop.
Co-President of the GHRA, Mr. Mike McCormack, yesterday said that about 70 civil society organisations have been invited to the forum.
He noted that the primary aim of the workshop is to identify a range of tasks that needs to be addressed if a national strategy on race and ethnicity is to be developed.
He said, too, that a second aim is to identify organisations with similar interest to one’s own in order to create effective coalitions and networks to improve racial harmony, while the third aim is to rank the issues that the workshop identifies in some order of priority.