International Human Rights Day to be celebrated Saturday
This Saturday Belize will join countries around the world in observing International Human Rights Day. Officials at the Belize Centre for Human Rights Studies, based at the University of Belize, will mark the occasion with the launch of its website. This morning News Five spoke with Hilary Hunt who has been a human rights advocate and educational officer in Belize for the past eight years.
Hilary Hunt, Board Member, Centre for Human Rights Studies
?We were really looking at Belize?s roles and responsibilities on the international stage of human rights, because Belize is part of the U.N. and the O.A.S., Organization of American States, has got an external role on the international stage of developing and monitoring and evaluating human rights.?
?It was a very substantive seminar and we were very lucky to have Mr. Brian Titimore from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Secretariat in Washington who talked about the Inter-American system and the fact that Belize hasn?t ratified the American Convention on Human Rights and their desire, obviously, that Belize would do so because there are only a few countries which haven?t ratified it, mainly in the Caribbean.?
?The website is in the early stages as all websites start off, and it?s the first part of a much more comprehensive resource centre that we want to build, really primarily to support the students in their work on human rights, to support faculty members because we want to integrate human rights into their own curriculum, and to open a wider world on the whole world of human rights to the public and NGOs and anybody who wants to check out anything about human rights.?
The website address is www.humanrightsstudies.org.bz. In addition to the website, this week the Belize Center for Human Rights Studies hosted a seminar with government officials to discuss how human rights issues can be incorporated into legislation and national policies.
