Mural Celebrates Founding of Valley of Peace

World Refugee Day was celebrated in the Valley of Peace on Sunday with the unveiling of a mural.  It was designed to celebrate the founding of Valley of Peace in 1982 as the first refugee-hosting community in Belize.  According to a release from the United Nations Refugee Agency, this area is currently a safe haven to some ten percent of the country’s total number of refugees and asylum-seekers who have been arriving since 2010.  Belize hosts some two thousand four hundred registered asylum seekers and an estimated three thousand four hundred more unregistered ones. Established for and built by refugees, Valley of Peace – a name chosen to highlight a community of persons having found peace after having been forced to flee from the civil war in El Salvador – became an official village and has contributed to life in Belize, especially in the field of agriculture, but also in professions as doctors, nurses, teachers, and public officers.  This mural is the first of a series of community empowerment initiatives in the Cayo District, coordinated by the Group of United Refugee Women celebrating refugee-hosting communities, and promoting peaceful coexistence between refugees and Belizeans.  World Refugee Day is celebrated each year on June twentieth.  This year’s theme is “Together we heal, learn, and shine.”