Human Rights In The British Virgin Islands
In practice, basic human rights are broadly respected in the British Virgin Islands (BVI). Reports of repression of freedom of speech, interference with democracy or the rule of law, and arbitrary arrest and torture are virtually unknown. The BVI have been described as “generally free of human rights abuses” and its government has been characterised as taking “a strong and proactive approach to the protection of human rights.”
However, the laws in the British Virgin Islands do openly discriminate against people who do not hold what is called “belonger status.” This form of discrimination is expressly preserved in the BVI constitution, which excludes non-belongers from the full scope of its non-discrimination protections. Belongers and non-belongers enjoy unequal rights to employment and to the right to purchase property, and in certain cases non-belongers are made subject to higher rates of taxation. Also, non-belongers in certain professions are subject to exploitation and abuse which their status makes it more difficult for them to challenge
Read more about Human Rights In The British Virgin Islands: Constitutional Human-rights Protections, Human Rights in The Criminal Code, Orders-in-council, Human-rights Conventions and Covenants, HRRCC, Belonger Status and Human Rights, LGBT Rights, Human-rights Efforts
Famous quotes containing the words human, rights, british, virgin and/or islands:
“You and I ... are convinced of the fact that if our Government in Washington and in a majority of the States should revert to the control of those who frankly put property ahead of human beings instead of working for human beings under a system of government which recognizes property, the nation as a whole would again be in a bad situation.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (18821945)
“The importance of a lost romantic vision should not be underestimated. In such a vision is power as well as joy. In it is meaning. Life is flat, barren, zestless, if one can find ones lost vision nowhere.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 19 (1962)
“However British you may be, I am more British still.”
—Henry James (18431916)
“Tis chastity, my brother, chastity.
She that has that is clad in complete steel,
And like a quivered nymph with arrows keen
May trace huge forests and unharbored heaths,
Infamous hills and sandy perilous wilds,
Where, through the sacred rays of chastity,
No savage fierce, bandit, or mountaineer
Will dare to soil her virgin purity.”
—John Milton (16081674)
“What are the islands to me
if you are lost
what is Naxos, Tinos, Andros,
and Delos, the clasp
of the white necklace?”
—Hilda Doolittle (18861961)