■  Felix Alvarez:  “It’s a scandal that Downing Street has looked the other way for so long at the Gibraltar Government’s disrespect for European Convention rulings on the need for age of consent equality on the Rock.”

GIBRALTAR, October 8, 2007  –  Gibraltar’s Chief Minister Peter Caruana’s failure to act on the legal age of consent is degrading the constitution and turning the Rock’s highest law into a series of voluntary codes as far as human rights are concerned, Equality Rights GGR claimed last night.

And the group revealed that it has made a formal submission to the Foreign Affairs Committee inquiry on the Overseas Territories of the British Parliament.

Felix Alvarez, chairman of GGR, said that both the Gibraltar and British governments were “failing in their legal obligations” when it came to human rights on the age of consent issue.

“By not implementing binding requirements of the European Convention of Human Rights on the age of consent, Mr Caruana is passing the buck to Gordon Brown, Mr. Alvarez said in a hard-hitting statement.

“In the end, it will be the British Prime Minister who will have to do Mr Caruana’s work.

“It’s a scandal that Downing Street has looked the other way for so long at the Gibraltar Government’s disrespect for European Convention rulings on the need for age of consent equality on the Rock,” he said.

“The people of Gibraltar clearly want equality and European standard human rights.  But the conservative Government of the Rock is out of step with public opinion.

“The reality is that by refusing to directly exercise Convention duties, the Chief Minister is handing over human rights authority to the British government.  This is exactly what happened in 1993 when Gibraltar failed to live up to the Convention and Britain stepped in to require decriminalisation of gay relations.

“The Chief Minister’s failure to act is inviting the same kind of intervention, even when Gibraltar politicians say they don’t want to be treated as mere ‘colonials’.

“The Foreign Affairs Committee parliamentary inquiry, however, centres on the British Government’s conduct.  Under both the European Convention of Human Rights and obligations in the European Union, Her Majesty’s Government cannot wash its hands clean of Gibraltarian citizens’ human rights.

“They cannot just point to local constitutional provisions and leave it up to Caruana. The British government’s international law duty to apply human rights in Gibraltar is non-delegable and above any Constitutional arrangement,” Alvarez said.

“Peter Caruana’s track record would indicate he has no desire to implement same-sex progress in Gibraltar law unless legally obliged.

“This ‘over my dead body’ policy, as far as sexual minorities are concerned, is behind the times and inconsistent with a modern Gibraltar,” he suggested.

“Equality Rights Group GGR will challenge government through the courts and by every legitimate means until institutionalized prejudice, inequality and intolerance regarding all forms of discrimination are history in our own land,” he concluded.

■  Gibraltar, an overseas territory of Great Britain, has so far failed to implement the equalisation of age of consent for gays.  Britain equalised the age at 16 for both heterosexuals and homosexuals in 2001 (in Northern Ireland it is 17 for both – the same as in the Irish Republic).  In Gibraltar, the age of consent for heterosexuals is 16, and 18 for homosexuals.

SEE ALSO

Gay Rights Group Welcomes Intervention of British Prime Minister.  The Gibraltar Equality Rights group, GGR, this afternoon welcomed the intervention of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown over the inequality of the UK’s self-governing overseas territory’s age of consent laws.  (UK Gay News, October 16, 2007)

PM Brown To Take Up Gay Age of Consent Inequality in Gibraltar.  British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is to take-up the matter of the unequal age of consent still in place in Gibraltar, an overseas territory of the United Kingdom.  ((UK Gay News, October 16, 2007)

Gay Age of Consent Equality: ‘We Have Given Gibraltarian Government Long Enough’.  A British Member of the European Parliament has pledged today to take the matter of equality of the age of consent in Gibraltar directly to the heart of Number 10 Downing Street. (UK Gay News, October 8, 2007)

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Posted: 08 October 2007 at 00:00 (UK time)