Ministry of Human Development Introduces Project BA1

Judith Alpuche

Today is international day of human rights.  Coinciding with activities being held was the launch of a SICA-led initiative to prevent violence against women in Central America.  This morning, at the Biltmore dozens of stakeholders across various sectors, including the Women’s Department and other similar organizations, gathered for the introduction.  At a cost of one point five million U.S. dollars, the project is set to be executed in three phases across all participating SICA member states.

Judith Alpuche, C.E.O., Ministry of Human Development

“This is basically the official launch of a regional project for the prevention of violence against women, femicide and human trafficking.  This project is coming through the SICA system, it is actually a part of the regional security plan for Central America that’s being developed through the SICA system and this is the first project under its component B.  So there’s four components to the regional strategy and the component B is violence prevention.  So the project is called Project BA1.  That’s how we’re referring to it regionally.  What it is, it offers an opportunity for Belize to really scale up its national response to violence against women.  So we have situated this project and the activities in this project very much within the context of our own national response.  So it melds very well with our national plan of action on gender-based violence and the National Gender Policy and the policies that we’re trying to advance there.  It offers us an opportunity to work at three levels or to continue our work at three levels: at regional level where we will be working along with our sister Central American countries to look at frameworks and policies and responses at a regional level to eradicate violence against women.  At national level, to look at things like our protocols to build capacity to be able to execute those national protocols.  Data and strengthening our data gathering capacity which is critically important because if we are to respond to this issue adequately we need the data to make informed, evidence-based policy decisions.”