BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – Human and gender rights activist, Felicia Dujon, has defended the decision by parents to file a lawsuit against the Barbados government over the controversy last year regarding an Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) administered survey.
“I saw some claims where people say parents may use their children for monetary purposes. It’s not about that; it’s about justice,” she told a news conference, insisting that the parents taking action over how the survey was administered “atonement and justice.”
” So it is essential that when we see people trying to get atonement for the harm that was done that we support them,” Dujon said, adding, “If the state did any harm and the court proves that it harmed, then they have every responsibility to pay and make atonement for that.”
The online publication, Barbados TODAY, reported last Friday that the Ministry of Education had been formally served with a pre-action warning letter indicating that court action would be taken unless it agreed to accept liability for the survey’s impact on students.
Attorney Ajamu Boardi, who is leading a three-member legal team representing the three parents who are bringing the action, said that plaintiffs are seeking, among other things, damages, hinting at the possibility of an out-of-court settlement.
“We are saying they breached the provisions of the Data Protection Act, they breached the clients’ right to privacy, frustrated their legitimate expectations concerning privacy, parental rights, family life, and the rights of their children,” Boardi had told Barbados TODAY.
Last October, first-form students at five secondary schools completed the IDB survey as part of a Computer Science pre-test that included several questions which sparked public outrage.
The questions included whether students ever deliberately tried to hurt or kill themselves heard sounds or voices others think aren’t there, thought about suicide, or wished they were of the opposite sex.
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