Religion & Culture | Emancipation lecture to address property, law

Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Tracy Robinson, will be the presenter for this year's annual Churches' Emancipation Lecture.

She will speak on the topic 'From the Chattel House to the Family Home: Property and the Law after Emancipation'.

The lecture will take place at 4 p.m. today at the Bethel Baptist Church at 6 Hope Road, in St Andrew.

It will examine some of the ways in which Caribbean laws and judges have been rethinking what and where is 'home', and who is entitled to it.

FOCUS

The presentation will focus on questions of property, personhood, family and home as interlinked concerns for today.

Robinson has worked extensively in the areas of constitutional, family, and human-rights law. In Barbados, she served as a member of the Family Law Council for eight years.

She was also a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) between 2012 and 2015 and served in various positions at the IACHR, including as its president between 2014 and 2015.

The Churches' Emancipation Lecture Series is celebrating its 25th renewal this year. This occasion will provide an opportunity to honour the visionaries who founded the lecture series and some of those who have played leading roles in sustaining it.

The founders, the Reverend Dr Burchell Taylor and the Reverend J. Oliver Daley, will be joined by awardees Linnette Vassell, the Reverend Dr Neville Callam and the Reverend Canon Ernle Gordon.

The event is organised each year by the Churches' Emancipation Lecture Committee with members drawn from a group of Jamaican churches.

These include Bethel Baptist, Boulevard Baptist, Hope United, Meadowbrook United, and Webster Memorial United, as well as the United Theological College of the West Indies.

There will be a cultural performance by representatives of the participating churches, and musical items by the Bethel Steel Band, among others.

Members of the public are encouraged to attend this year's lecture which is free of cost and forms part of Jamaica's Emancipation and Independence celebrations.