The Referendum Unit and its Role in Pedagogy

Stuart Leslie

The role of the Referendum Unit which has now evolved into the International Boundaries Unit is critical to the overall awareness by Belizeans of the Belize/Guatemala issue. The wealth of information that has been gathered and compiled is invaluable as a teaching aid for academic lessons from primary to tertiary levels. Ambassador Stuart Leslie has been at the helm of the unit and today he explained to teachers how they can access and apply the relevant information to their social studies syllabus.

Stuart Leslie, Referendum Commission

“The Referendum Commission comprises of leaders of the community across Belize, not the minister, he is not on the referendum commission, Assad is not on the referendum commission, the president of the B.N.T.U. is a member of the referendum commission, the president of the Belize Workers Union is a member, the churches both Evangelical and the Council of Churches, the P.U.P. and the D.P.P. all of them are members that comprise of the referendum commission. It is responsible for the education campaign, our mandate is to provide the information for you, we will provide you with the pros, the cons, the risks and the advantages of going to court. Therefore what we did two years ago was we asked Mr. Humphreys a history teacher for many, many years and former principal of Stann Creek Ecumenical High School to proper a teaching kit for high school teachers of history and social studies classes. We have it and we have given it to the Associations of principals of secondary schools who has a representative on the referendum commission, we have all this information at the Referendum Unit.”

The B.N.T.U. campaign will now proceed to other districts. On a note of interest last week Friday Belize presented a set of eleven protocols to Guatemala on the Sarstoon with a request that they respond in a week. Well it’s a week now and our understanding is that Guatemala has not responded.