A female in St. Kitts and Nevis has been accused of two money-related offences that occurred in 2020 and 2019.

Thirty-three-year-old Latoya Rawlins of Buckley’s Estate was arrested and charged by the Police on two warrants, in the first instance, for the offence of Money Laundering (by possession of money that is the proceeds of an offence) and on two warrants, in the first instance, for the offence of Larceny by Servant.

The offences were committed between January 2019 and August 2020 in Basseterre. Rawlins is accused of stealing a total of just over E.C. $390,000 from her previous place of employment during that period.

She was charged on May 13, and released on bail on May 14, in the sum of $200,000 with two sureties.

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GENEVA (ILO News) – The 109th Session of the International Labour Conference  (ILC) will, for the first time in its history, be held virtually, reflecting changes imposed by the COVID-19 crisis.

In another special arrangement, the ILC will open on 20 May to elect its Officers and set the Conference in motion. The Conference will then proceed in two parts; the first in June 2021 and a second in November-December 2021.

The June sittings will start on 3 June, with meetings of the Conference committees that are expected to run for two and a half weeks.

Work in plenary will commence on 7 June and will be addressed by the President of the Swiss Confederation. The ILO’s Director-General, Guy Ryder and the Chairperson of the Governing Body will also present their reports, which will cover two years. This will be followed by the introductory statements of the Presidents of the ILC’s Employers and Workers groups.

The items on the June segment of the ILC agenda include a special outcome document on the ILO response to COVID-19 , the ILO’s programme and budget for 2022-23 , the recurrent discussion on social protection , and consideration of the reports on the application of labour standards during the pandemic and related country case discussions.

The World of Work Summit, entitled, International action for a human-centred COVID-19 response, will take place on 17 and 18 June, with sessions running for about 90 minutes each day. The Summit will include a high-level segment with heads of state and government and a panel discussion with tripartite representatives.

Other ILC events will include for World Day Against Child Labour, on 10 June (World Day falls on a Saturday this year), and the launch of a report on child labour.

The June part of the ILC will close on 19 June.

The ILC will resume its work in November, with an agenda that includes two thematic discussions in committees, one on inequalities and the world of work and the second on skills and life-long learning. The Director-General is expected to close the 109th ILC on 11 December.

The work of the ILC can be followed via the “ILC live” section of the ILO’s website, which will include live coverage of the plenary sessions. There will also be a live blog with rolling coverage. A 30-minute “Daily Show”, covering key moments and themes, will go live at 16.30 CEST each day on the ILO website, as well as YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn.

All ILC coverage, as well as photos, videos and social media links will be available via the Conference webpages: https://www.ilo.org/ilc 

The ILC, sometimes known as the world parliament of labour, is the largest international gathering dedicated to the world of work, attended by representatives of governments, employers and workers from the 187 ILO Member States. As well as discussing key world of work issues, delegates discuss, adopt and monitor International Labour Standards and set the ILO’s global agenda and budget.

The 109th session of the annual ILC was deferred from 2020 to this year by the ILO’s Governing Body, as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ILO’s Governing Body  will meet twice during this period, on May 21 and June 25.

For further information and to arrange print media interviews, please contact the ILO Department of Communication: ne******@*lo.org .

For broadcast coverage and interviews, please contact: mu********@*lo.org .

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Chilean women made such a strong showing in elections to pick candidates to draft the country’s new constitution that adjustments to ensure the body was equally split between genders had to be made in favor of more men, elections body Servel said on Monday.

A total of five seats were handed to female candidates who polled lower than male counterparts in certain districts to ensure a 50-50 gender split, while seven seats were handed to men who polled lower.

The idea to ensure the body drafting the new constitution was equal in gender was originally blocked by right wing parties but eventually approved by Congress – in what rights activists said was a world first.

Analysts celebrated the moving to the fore of women in a historically conservative nation, while others lamented the fact any ceiling had been placed on victorious female candidates at all.

Alondra Carrillo Vidal, 29, a psychologist who acted as spokeswoman for the 8M women’s movement that has driven some of the largest protests against the center-right government in recent years, was picked to represent the capital Santiago’s working class southern suburbs. She said she had raised concerns at the start about a 50% cap on women which she suggested had been borne out.

“What this result shows is that our power overflows all the frameworks that try to contain it and what was presented as a democratic minimum was actually a way of maintaining the presence of men in representative spaces,” she said.

A total of 699 women stood for seats on the convention, and 674 men. The electoral body said 77 women had secured seats, and 78 men.

The requirement for gender parity forced political groups to look for competitive female candidates, Julieta Suarez-Cao, academic at the Catholic University’s Political Science Institute, told the Diario Financiero newspaper.

“This shows Chile is not a macho country, that if you find the competitive and good candidates – and there are many – people will vote for them,” she said.

Javiera Arce, a political scientist at the University of Valparaiso, told Reuters the victory of so many women underscored how they had previously been undervalued as a political force in Chile, while men had been nudged up through the ranks.

“From now on, I think men will simply have to up their game,” she said.

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People pass in a vintage car in front of a rainbow flag hanging beside a Cuban flag at the Health Ministry building in Havana, Cuba, May 17, 2021. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini

Many members of the LGBT+ community say, however, they have been frustrated by a slowdown in the pace of change in recent years while a handful of other Latin American countries have moved forward with approving gay marriage.

Activists were further irked by the 2018 decision to withdraw an amendment to Cuba’s new constitution that would have opened the doorway to same-sex unions after campaigning by evangelical churches.

Authorities decided instead for the controversial issue to be determined in the update to the family code, a draft of which is slated to be unveiled at parliament’s July session, before it is eventually submitted to a referendum.

“We’ve already made it this far,” said LGBT+ activist Yasiel Valdes Girola, referring to the flag outside the health ministry. “What remains is for the new family code to recognize the legal union between two people, regardless of gender or sex, and the opportunity to build a family.”

Some LGBT+ activists complain that bringing about change in society has been complicated by the fact that grassroots campaigning outside state institutions is at best tricky in Cuba, and at worst causes run-ins with Communist authorities.

Two years ago there was a schism in the LGBT+ community when a small group of activists held an independent gay pride march, which eventually was dispersed by police. Authorities denounced it as an attempt to undermine the government.

Meanwhile, churches that oppose gay marriage have powerful platforms for spreading their message which they wielded to their advantage during the constitutional revamp, gathering signatures for a petition against the article that would have opened the door to gay marriage and railing against it at church gatherings.

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