The Rights of All Persons without Distinction as to Race, Colour, or National or Ethnic Origin

1953: The Rights of All Persons in the Cayman Islands without Distinction as to Race, Colour, or National or Ethnic Origin.

In 1953, Caymanian National Hero, Ms. Sybil McLaughlin, championed the rights of all persons, without distinction as to race, colour, or national or ethnic origin.  One of the most popular events on the social calendar in Grand Cayman used to be the weekly dance held at the Town Hall in George Town. Segregation by colour was conventional at this event until challenged by Ms. McLaughlin, when she gracefully accepted an invitation to dance from a British official.

Not only did Ms. McLaughlin’s courage result in racial segregation becoming a thing of the past at the dance, it also sent a powerful message of equality and unity that reverberated throughout the Cayman Islands.  The right to live free from racial prejudice and discrimination in an environment where understanding, tolerance and friendship are promoted is now enshrined in Article 7 of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination was adopted in 1966; some 13 years after the right that is now found in Article 7 of this International Convention was asserted in the Cayman Islands.  Whilst the provision of human rights in the Cayman Islands would undoubtedly improve with the inclusion of a Chapter of Fundamental Rights in a new Constitution, this would be a supplement to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which, although not directly enforceable, has been extended to the Cayman Islands since 1969.  In a society that currently has 109 different nationalities living together; the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which includes the right to live free from racial prejudice and discrimination and also condemns colonialism, along with all associated practices of discrimination and segregation, is therefore distinctly relevant to the Cayman Islands.