Church leaders discuss meeting with PM Barrow

On Wednesday Church leaders met with Prime Minister Dean Barrow to discuss the gender policy and other related issues. Some fringes of the organized church gave the impression that it would have been a heated, confrontational session – a kind of withdraw the gender policy or else scenario. But it wasn’t. By all indication it was a cordial session, with both parties agreeing to meet again in July. Today, church leaders held a short briefing to inform the media that the gender policy discussion was on track, and the delay could not be blamed on G.O.B.

Pastor Eugene Crawford, President, Association of Evangelical Churches

“I think that even ourselves as an Association and as a church, we have dropped the ball in not really being proactive in following up as duly as we should have. So as much as the time has moved on, we stand to be blamed because we have, as we said, seventy percent of our population, and let’s say the entire Belize knows about this and have been waiting for some response and we haven’t been giving timely responses or updates on what’s taking place. But I can never sit here and say that there’s an ill faith on government’s part or in dragging their feet in dealing with this issue…no, that’s not the case.”

Pastor Scott Stirm, Belize Action

“The centre core of our discussions were surrounding the government’s position on the gender policy, about the ramifications of how that relates to a number of different objects, but one of the things we did discuss was the visit from Caleb Orozco and Steven Diaz to the Human Rights Branch of the OAs and the fact of how that played out and again just discussing with the Prime Minister what is his position on those issues. We covered that as well. Again, what we continue to sound the trumpet on is the societal ramification of how particularly this is going to effect in relations to children and education. The gender policy is presenting concepts and themes that will have huge ramifications upon education.”