Parliament will lose a dedicated human rights activist when Paget East MP and Opposition spokesperson for Women's Issues Kim Young retires.

Mrs. Young, 59, confirmed reports in this newspaper Friday that she will not be running in the next general election, which has to be called by November next year and held at the latest in February 2004.

A parliamentarian for almost six years, Mrs Young said she decided to step down because she wanted to travel with her husband Ward, who retired in 2000 when he sold the family business The Phoenix Group and BGA.

"He's away a lot enjoying his retirement and I'd like to enjoy his retirement with him," she said. "It also gives the opportunity for new faces, younger faces which is good because they need that experience, they need that opportunity. So I am not going to run in the next election."

Among her disappointments are the fact that the Human Rights Act has not yet been amended to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of age and sexual orientation, she said.

"I was also disappointed, although they have just changed it now in the Throne Speech, that they didn't include gender and nationality in the CURE legislation. We would have had a picture by now of how women are doing in the community, of how young men are doing... We are always complaining about how young men are doing in the community. We had the perfect opportunity to find out how they were doing and we still don't have a clear picture."

The proposal to introduce a Parental Responsibility Act should also have been done a long time ago, she said.

Mrs. Young, served on the Human Rights Commission (HRC) from 1995 until 1997 and revealed that neither the Commission nor her party has been able to arrive at a consensus on the sexual orientation amendment, which she said must also be true with the Progressive Labour Party parliamentary group. "No group should be discriminated against," she said.

Mrs. Young, a registered nurse, arrived on the Island from her native Australia in 1966. She worked at King Edward Memorial Hospital until 1971 and besides the Human Rights Commission has served on a number of government boards and committees including the Sexual Assault Review Committee and the Women's Advisory Council, which she chaired in the early nineties, the Bermuda Hospitals Board, Fairhavens and the Task Force on Women's Issues. She became the parliamentary representative for Paget East in May 1997 and a year later was appointed Minister without Portfolio.

As an Opposition Member she served as Shadow Minister for Health and Family Services from 1998 to 2000 and was appointed spokesperson for Environment and Women's Issues in November last year. Newcomer Jamahl Simmons took over the environment portfolio last month.

"The UBP was to me a party that believed in the free enterprise system with a social conscience and I think that's the way a country should go," she said when asked why she joined the United Bermuda Party.

She lamented the increase in pollution, traffic, violence and what she said was an deterioration in race relations since she came here in the mid '60s.

"In my experience, when I came in 1966, I associated with people of both races and I never felt any discrimination until I went into the House of Assembly," Mrs Young said. "That's the first time I really felt that people were prejudiced - they look at me and think because you've got blue eyes and white skin, therefore you must think a certain way. In fact Lois Brown Evans said because I was born in Australia I had to think a certain way."

She blamed the PLP for "keeping that issue alive". "Whether it's deliberate or not I don't know, but I think they keep it alive."