By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune News Editor

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

ATTORNEY General Ryan Pinder said criminalising marital rape was the number one human rights issue countries raised with The Bahamas when the United Nations Human Rights Commission reviewed its record last month.

He said: “During the questions and interventions presented by the member countries on our national report the top five points raised include: 1) Criminalising of marital rape, 2) Gender-based violence, 3) Moratorium on the death penalty, 4) Equality in the transmission of citizenship and 5) Asylum and trafficking in persons matters.”

Mr Pinder said a parliamentary committee on human rights would “have a significant obligation” to review these matters and other recommendations from the Universal Periodic Review.

“We look to call the first meeting in short order for a detailed presentation on the UPR report and process,” he said yesterday as the Senate debated a resolution to establish a parliamentary human rights committee.

Although most legislators say they support criminalising marital rape, it is not clear the Davis administration will pass a law accomplishing this. Successive administrations pledged to address the politically sensitive issue, but failed to do so.

Last year, a Supreme Court judge found that while the actions of a husband toward his wife were cruel, they did not constitute rape because there is no rape in marriage under Bahamian law. In that judgement, Justice Denise Lewis-Johnson granted a divorce to a woman who said she had felt like a rape victim “for an extensive period of time.”

Rape of a spouse is criminalised under the Sexual Offences Act only in cases where there is a decree of divorce, a decree of judicial separation, a separation agreement, an order of a court for the person not to molest or cohabit with his spouse or where the person has notice that a petition for judicial separation, divorce or nullity of marriage has been presented to a court.