Early Unions – A Roadmap in the Making to Address Issue

The United Nations Population Fund has been working hand in hand with its partner agency UNICEF in the development of a roadmap to address child marriages and early unions in Belize. This is the first attempt in the Caribbean to develop such a strategy.  Now, in the region child marriages are widespread, but in Belize, unions between children at a younger age are becoming commonplace. This, Liaison Officer Tisa Grant says, presents opportunities for exploitation among other issues that affect the young people. When finalized, the roadmap, will lay out the actions to be taken to address the problem.

Tisa Grant

Tisa Grant, Liaison Officer, UNFPA [Belize]

“UNICEF and UNFPA actually have a global programme addressing child marriage and early unions and we also have a specific strategy for Latin America and the Caribbean that we work together on. And so we join forces as well with CAMIFund to support Belize in developing a roadmap to address child marriage and early union. This actually came at the request of the government, through the National Commission for Families and Children, and so we recently had a workshop where we basically got information from the stakeholders and the public at large and are now working on developing that roadmap which will then go through that usual validation process, etc. So we are still doing the necessary focus groups, consultations, interviews and all that are necessary to inform the development of that roadmap.”