The main financiers for Jamaica’s National Identification System (NIDS) yesterday apologized to Barbadian citizens after outraged parents threatened lawsuits arising from their children being fielded “inappropriate” and “disturbing” questions in a survey administered at five secondary schools.
The survey was administered by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) as a pre-test on Computer Science for students in their first year of high school. Students were quizzed on their sexuality, gender identity, substance use and abuse as well as personal information about their parents.
Formulated by an organization called Code.org, the test was circulated by the Ministry of Education, Technological and Vocational Training in Barbados. Personnel from Code.org supervised the test, which contained close to 300 questions and required the children to write their names. Parents learnt about the details of the test from their children, who expressed discomfort after completing the mandatory exercise.
Parents described the test as “grueling” and “distasteful” and demanded answers from the Education Ministry, according to media reports. The IDB later issued a statement expressing regret that the survey administered by the bank had offended many Barbadians.
“The questions at the center of concern, to which the Ministry of Education had objected prior to the administering of the survey and which were inadvertently left in the paper, have been removed,” the development bank said.
The IDB supports the process and administration of regional and country-specific projects and programs in Caribbean countries like Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana, among others. The organization has provided a US$68-million loan to the Jamaican government to finance the NIDS, which is expected to provide a comprehensive and secure structure for capturing and storing personal identity information on Jamaican citizens.
The NIDS has, however, not attracted the support of Jamaicans and the Jamaican court has ruled that the legislation which would give effect to NIDS was unconstitutional and struck down the entire law. A panel of judges ruled that the involuntary nature of the policy infringes upon guaranteed constitutional rights.
The President of the Lawyer’s Christian Fellowship, attorney Helene Coley-Nicholson, noted that the IDB apologized that the questions were “inadvertently” included despite objection from the Barbadian Ministry of Education, but not for the line of questioning. She pointed out that the IDB and other multi-national institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have committed to protecting a particular view of human rights.
“All of those organisations together have committed to protecting certain ideas of human rights, including LGBTQ rights. So it is part and parcel of a system which is meant to ‘develop’ under-developed or developing countries, among which are Barbados and Jamaica,” said the attorney.
The IDB noted on its website that it prioritizes social inclusion and equality. It does this by addressing cross-cutting issues of gender equality and diversity. The IDB Gender and Diversity Division is tasked with promoting the inclusion of LGBTQ+ and other vulnerable groups through three strategic lines of action. One of these actions is to generate data and evidence on what works, to support future policies and operations.
Coley-Nicholson believes the Barbados Ministry of Education should shoulder the responsibility for the questions being given to the students although it had objected; but she said the Ministry is in an awkward position.
She continued, “There is increasingly an expectation that countries will sign on to the CSE (Comprehensive Sexuality Education) as a condition for receiving aid and loan support, and Barbados is one of them. It is also being pushed on Jamaica. There has been some push back in Jamaica.”
The chief education officer at the Ministry of Education, Technological and Vocational Training in Barbados, Dr Ramona Archer Bradshaw, has since apologized for the “unfortunate exposure” of the secondary school children to questions that offended them, their parents, and other stakeholders. She said the Ministry took too much for granted.
“Notwithstanding the fact that the Inter-American Development Bank, which administered the survey, has already apologized for its failure to honour a prior commitment to the Ministry to remove the offending questions before placing them before the children, the Ministry now tenders its own apology,” she said.
Earlier this year, during the launch of a Formative Assessment Report in Barbados conducted under the European Union-funded Caribbean Regional Spotlight Initiative; Caribbean partners agreed that Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) needed to be better promoted in the Caribbean.
