Seychelles

In one of her last decisions before ending a five-year contract as head of the judiciary in Seychelles, Chief Justice Mathilda Twomey came out strongly on the need for the country’s penal code to be modernised in relation to its definition of consent in sexual offences. The CJ said that at present it only defined ‘absence of consent’, and that it was time ‘to look beyond the traditional male perspective as the prism through which sexual offences must necessarily be viewed.’

The five-year contract of Chief Justice Mathilda Twomey came to an end earlier this month, and a new judicial leader for Seychelles must now be appointed. That is the responsibility of the Constitutional Appointments Authority of Seychelles. In the meantime, however, an Acting Chief Justice has been named: Justice Melchior Vidot.

No-one could ever call Justice Mathilda Twomey of Seychelles a ‘usual’ kind of person. She has spent the last five years as the highly-successful Chief Justice of Seychelles and a member of the country’s apex Court of Appeal. But she had only accepted the post on condition that she would stand down as CJ at the end of five years. Now she has reached the end of that contract period, and is about to start a new phase in her life, one that could greatly benefit a wider community than just Seychelles.