A/HRC/44/13 (Rights and Freedoms) Amendment Bill would grant protections to persons identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or intersex and provide the constitutional basis for legitimizing same-sex marriage. 9. The head of delegation recalled the technical support given to Grenada by several United Nations agencies, including the United Nations Development Programme, the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and its Electoral Assistance Division and the OHCHR Rule of Law Unit, and thanked them for the pivotal roles they had played in the 2016 iteration of constitutional reforms in Grenada. 10. Grenada had continued to enact and bring into force legislation to promote and protect human rights, for instance, the Electronic Crimes Act (Act No. 23 of 2013), the Prevention of Trafficking in Persons Act (Act No. 34 of 2014) and the Juvenile Justice Act (Act No. 24 of 2012), which came into force in 2016. At the same time, the following draft bills were being discussed with respect to sexual offences: the Criminal Code (Amendment) Bill 2019, the Evidence (Amendment) Bill 2019 and the Criminal Procedure Code (Amendment) Bill 2019. 11. A series of youth-focused programmes had been implemented with a view to decreasing unemployment and bolstering entrepreneurship. Moreover, programmes with objectives ranging from providing affordable housing to providing substantive assistance for the poor and vulnerable had been implemented with a view to improving living standards and eradicating poverty. 12. Grenada had long recognized climate change as one of the greatest threats to human rights and sustainable development. Consequently, during its 2016 iteration of constitutional reforms, it had considered the Constitution of Grenada (Rights and Freedoms) Amendment Bill. The Bill sought to introduce into the Constitution provisions on the State’s duty to protect and preserve the environment and not let it suffer degradation, to protect the country against the adverse effects of climate change and to promote preparedness for natural disasters. The amendments relating to climate change and the environment would have placed Grenada among the first countries in the world, and certainly the first in the Commonwealth Caribbean, to include provisions relating to climate change in their constitutions. Although the Bill did not garner the required two-thirds approval in the subsequent referendum, the Government remained resolute in its quest to protect the human rights of its citizens from the adverse effects of climate change through its legal and policy infrastructure. 13. A key development during the period under review was the establishment in 2018 of the Ministry of Climate Resilience, Environment, Forestry, Fisheries, Disaster Management and Information. The mandate of the Ministry was to mainstream climate change mitigation and disaster management. 14. Grenada was committed to providing an enabling environment for its citizens to participate in environmental decision-making and, to that end, had become a signatory to the Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean in September 2019. The Agreement was not only the first regional environmental treaty in Latin America and the Caribbean, it was the first in the world to incorporate specific guarantees for a safe and enabling environment for human rights defenders in environmental matters and for the protection and promotion of their rights. Grenada had begun to engage in pre-ratification activities and the country would be hosting a pre-ratification workshop, with the assistance of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), during the first half of 2020. 15. Transparency measures had been incorporated into the National Climate Change Adaptation Plan for Grenada, which sought to ensure that citizens, communities and consumers had knowledge about potential climate-related vulnerabilities, risks and the impact of greenhouse gas emissions. 16. The head of delegation stressed that Grenada had decided to upgrade and expand the Office of the Ombudsman to enable it to function as the national human rights institution. The decision had been taken after three national stakeholder consultations facilitated by the Commonwealth Secretariat in Grenada in 2016, 2018 and 2019. 3