Women’s group says more must be done
In 1990, Belize signed on to the United Nations Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. Executive Director of Belize’s Women’s Issues Network, Carolyn Reynolds, says based on the little that has been done, we have not lived up to our commitments. Today WIN-Belize came together with its fifteen member organisations, government representatives, and other stakeholders to set things right. Reynolds says although the government has raised the minimum wage for domestic workers to three dollars an hour, it is hardly adequate.
Carolyn Reynolds, Executive Director, WIN-Belize
“Which is still not enough looking at the economy and the situation it is in but we still continue to work on these that affect women.”
“Another area, if you look at the domestic violence that women experience and yes we have been working on that, putting in policies and laws in place but one of the things is it has not been as effective as it should. So we need to strengthen it and we also need to insure that it is not implemented.”
“When young girls become pregnant there are some schools that allow them to go back after they have their child but there are some schools who don’t accept them back into the education system and this transcend into women getting more into poverty.”
“We need to sit down and really look at it, look at the strategies, look at what has been put in place, what impact is will have on communities, societies and on families.”
“And so what we hope to achieve form this is to come up some plan, that achievable goal that we can achieve before the next reporting which is 2001. So we are hoping that at least we can go a step further, getting closer to that goal and, like I said, using the convention as a tool it is there to be used but a lot of us don’t know.”
In July, Reynolds presented the Belize report at the United Nations. The next report is not due until 2011 and by then Reynolds believes Belize’s situation will be much improved.
