Foreign Ministry publishes yearbook

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs today launched its first yearbook, offering a synopsis of the country’s foreign policy activities during 2003. The sixty-three page book highlights decisions taken by government on a number of issues including Belize-Guatemala relations, the Plan Puebla Panama Initiative and other regional cooperation programmes. Minister of Foreign Affairs Godfrey Smith says the book should be seen as an attempt to give citizens a chance to become familiar with the work that the Ministry does.

Godfrey Smith, Minister of Foreign Affairs

?The purpose of the year book is to document foreign policy, not just activities but actually an analysis of what our foreign policy have been over the past year. It does not attempt to capture more than last year and the idea is every year you attempt to capture the foreign policy for that year. I think it?s useful to have in printed form or online some document that says what you policy has been. Everyday the government of Belize through its embassies abroad and through its Ministry of Foreign Affairs headquarters take policy decisions, whether it?s supporting one country?s candidacy for membership in a group or many other important foreign policy issues; support for U.N. resolution whatever it may be. Everyday those decisions are taken but so far we?ve never taken the time to distil them into one place year by year so that practitioners of foreign policy, students, academics in universities or ordinary Belizeans can take it out and say well we see what has been engaged in by Belize over the past year in terms of foreign policy.?

Copies of the Belize Foreign Policy Yearbook 2003 have been sent to embassies and consulates abroad and will be available to the public shortly. People with access to the internet can download a copy from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website at www.mfa.gov.bz.