Like millions of Indians, I had just a faint idea about Rastafarianism, hearing the word in Bob Marley’s songs, his dreadlocks and unkempt beard appeared similar to the Indian holy men with long locks, who lead a spiritual life. Living in Jamaica...
Do you have a drone? If you do, launch it and slow it down on a section of Riverton City where you may see a picture in frame after frame of five children sorting glass bottles, metals of various shapes or old electronic units as others with...
History education matters! History’s transformative power, and far-reaching implications for cultural, social and community empowerment, and national development, have long been understood. This is why Verene Shepherd, Judge Patrick Robinson, Sir...
There are many of us who need to place retirement and post–retirement as one of our top priorities. It is never too late to start planning. The key is to begin by making SMART moves and having a strategy in place. WHAT ARE SMART MOVES • Set...
As I watched parts of the 2021-22 Budget Debate, I had mixed feelings: on the one hand to commend aspects uplifting good governance; but on the other, to insist on an end to continued chronic, gross violations of transparency and accountability in...
As a consumer, do you know your rights? We make it known, sometimes at the top of our voices, when a product is faulty or we are dissatisfied with the standard of service. Perhaps we get our money back, or the product is exchanged, and maybe we are...
Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a bitter reality in Jamaica. There are consistent reports in the media detailing various incidents where women are murdered or maimed by their spouses. Courts deal with a plethora of cases where women have...
We are still in Women’s History Month. This week’s Reparation Conversations in collaboration with the Centre for Reparation Research at The University of the West Indies, continues the discussion by Professor Verene Shepherd in her article on...
The management of Hawkeye was recently moved to issue a statement after tragedy struck and one of its guards was killed in the line of duty. Sharon Laing, the general manager in charge of human resources said, after the killing: “There is an...
Climate change has already begun to change the way we live and will continue to drastically threaten our livelihoods for the foreseeable future. Extreme climate events continue to wreak havoc on Jamaica’s farming and agriculture sector. The Food...
It was just about this time last year that a dangerous chance of a lifetime descended on us. Something that you could contract like the common flu meant that I also had an equal chance of getting it. And if I was most unfortunate to pick it up from...
There is a link. Children who witness or experience domestic violence are at increased risk of intimate partner violence in adulthood – as victims and as abusers. The Women’s Health Survey Jamaica 2016 found that almost half of women who...
Before taking up my role as the Resident Representative of World Bank in Jamaica, I was posted in Tbilisi in Georgia, located at the intersection of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. Georgia, a small country with a population of 3.7 million people,...
At the end of 2020, Caroline Davis, a British scholar based at England’s Oxford Brookes University, published the book African Literature and the CIA: Networks of Authorship and Publishing. A chapter titled ‘Wole Soyinka, the Transcription Centre,...
The exact year when Jesus was anointed as the Messiah was foretold by the prophet Daniel – “Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto Messiah the Prince shall be...
Women and men are not the same, and they will never be. A while ago, a video in circulation ridiculed the European Union for supposedly claiming that “women equal men” and “men equal women”. That is to say that we are all the same. That assumption...
Online publication The Daily Beast carried an article last Wednesday which stated in part, “It’s been said that if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns – but that is not true in Japan, which has some of the strictest laws on the books...
A significant positive correlation between a country’s information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure and its economic growth has long been the received wisdom. Promoting policies and plans that inure to the roll-out and...
March is Women’s History Month. So this latest ‘Reparation Conversations’, done in collaboration with the Centre for Reparation Research at The University of the West Indies, outlines some reasons why Caribbean women deserve reparation. Verene...
For three years of my career, I was deeply involved as the United Kingdom’s leading official in Commonwealth matters. The highlight of this time was the meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, of all the Heads of Government in 2003. Her Majesty, the Queen, was...
About 40 years ago it was my observation that the judiciary, many of whom were baring their faces as sons and daughters who looked like the majority of our people, that is, black-skinned, were much too anxious to persecute poor black-skinned people...
Nigeria’s former finance minister under the Olusegun Obasanjo (1999-2007) and Goodluck Jonathan (2010-2015) administrations, 66-year old Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, takes over as director general of the Geneva-based World Trade Organization (WTO) on March...
Jamaica has six national symbols: the Coat of Arms; the National Flag; the National Bird (Doctor Bird); the National Tree (Blue Mahoe); the National Flower (Lignum Vitae); and the National Fruit (Ackee). These symbols relate to its national...
Two of the fundamental principles underlying Jamaica’s system of constitutional democracy are: “a) Governmental Accountability, b) Transparency”. (Access to Information Act 2004). Additionally, chapter 3 of Jamaica’s Constitution states that “All...
At the recent launch of the Special Reparation Issue of the Journal, Social and Economic Studies, hosted by the Centre of Reparation Research, in collaboration with the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, Stefan Richards...
