Advocate Craig Brewin has lauded Montserrat for advancing the rights of persons living with disabilities.
The matter came to the fore in Belfast during a recent visit to Ireland by Head of the Montserrat UK Office in London Kei-Retta Farrell, where she met with Steve Aiken, Deputy Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Aiken was one of the election observers at Montserrat’s 2024 general election.
The observers were impressed by the steps Montserrat had taken to make its electoral system more accessible to people with disabilities with the introduction of mobile voting, which allows officials to travel to voters who cannot travel to polling stations.
Brewin stated in his latest blog that this had caught the attention of the election observers, and there was active discussion about promoting similar arrangements elsewhere, including in Northern Ireland itself.
Brewin, who was a member of the Montserrat Association for Persons with Disabilities and the Red cross, said he was impressed, though not surprised because while in Montserrat, he was involved in the push for greater electoral accessibility.
He said while electoral accessibility is not a revolutionary concept, it illustrates an important point that the British Overseas Territories are not simply recipients of governance models developed elsewhere. They generate innovations of their own, and those innovations can travel.
The fact that its approach to disability-inclusive elections is now being cited in conversations at Queen’s University and around the Northern Ireland Assembly suggests that scale is not always the determining factor in influence.