Belize joins regional development group

Belize is hoping to strengthen its human and social development efforts with a bit of help from our Caribbean partners. Today, Prime Minister Said Musa officially launched the National Council for Human and Social Development, COHSOD, making Belize the eighth CARICOM state to establish such a council. The group will co-ordinate work in the areas of education, culture, labour, health, drug control, women’s affairs, youth and sports. On hand this morning to help the Prime Minister officially launch the council was Dr. Carla Barnett, Deputy Secretary General of CARICOM, and the council’s chairman, Minister of Human Development, Dolores Balderamos Garcia.

Dolores Balderamos Garcia, Min. of Human Dev.

“The Ministry of Human Development is very pleased to be chairing this committee, which will have its technical advice from the National Advisory Committee of course, with the Central Statistical Offices in input and our own policy unit of the Ministry also plugging in. But the Ministry of happy because now, I think for the first time coming into the Twenty-first Century, we’re not just a ministry that is providing a social safety net or a little bit of human services with the limited resources that we have. We are able now to sit and play the role of glue, the little gel that is bringing the national response together.”

Dr. Carla Barnett, Dep. Secretary Gen., CARICOM

“What it allows Belize or any other country that has a national COHSOD to do, is to organise all of the social sector issues on an intersectoral basis. So that when you’re dealing with an issue such as poverty for example, you deal with it from the point of view of education, health, women, all of the issues that are important in dealing with poverty are dealt with intersectorally.”

Barnett says the regional Council for Human and Social Development is in the process of assisting Belize with funding for AIDS education through the global fund for AIDS.