The Tribune

By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

A DRAFT version of the Citizenship Act should be presented to the Cabinet by the summer, Attorney General Ryan Pinder said on Friday.

Successive governments have sought to address the disparities in men and women passing on Bahamian citizenship in two failed constitutional referendums.

Mr Pinder has previously said the Davis administration intends to address the issue through legislation instead of holding another referendum.

“As the former Prime Minister (Hubert) Ingraham had mentioned a few weeks ago this can also be done by legislative action and that's what we’re looking at. We have an initial draft of the Citizenship Act prepared,” Mr Pinder said yesterday. “We’re going through it, well I’m refining it and we hope to be able to present it before Cabinet in rather short order as one of our commitments on human rights matters…”

Asked for a timeline, he said: “It should definitely be presented before Cabinet (in) the summer. As you know, it all depends on when the summer recess is for Parliament whether it gets tabled during summer or not, maybe on break, but we definitely would hope to have that before Cabinet by the summer months.”

The former member of Parliament for Elizabeth also reiterated that there is a comprehensive review underway of laws pertaining to juveniles. Social Services Minister Obie Wilchcombe had previously said the Office of the Attorney General is looking at “inconsistencies” in law with the age of consent. The issue is expected to also be brought to Cabinet soon for consideration.

When asked about the age of consent matter, Mr Pinder said: “Well that specifically is a policy decision by the Cabinet. We have benchmarked that internationally. The decision will effectively come down to whether Cabinet is prepared to leave it at — to go to 16 or 18.

“Even more important than that in respect to the juveniles in the country is that there are a lot of different age limits and confusing age aspects within our laws that pertain to juveniles and a lot of that time that creates confusion. It creates a lack of transparency and understanding, both in prosecution of juveniles who commit crimes, but in other elements of just society and culture.

“In large, we’re not looking at just the age of consent. We’re looking at all of the aspects for juveniles and the age limits throughout all of our pieces of legislation to see if we can bring more transparency, equality, reliability, and dependability with respect to age limits of juveniles and the laws that we have in the country.

"So that's just one element, the age of consent of what we’re doing. We have a comprehensive review underway right now of all of the areas in the law that pertain to children and juveniles and we look to make a recommendation to Cabinet shortly on that. That review is pretty advanced and then once Cabinet gives us directions on that, we’ll be able to prepare the requisite amendments to be able to go before Parliament on that.”

The current age of consent for sex is 16.