Ambassador Carlos Quesnel Melendez on Bilateral Agreements with Belize

Carlos Quesnel Melendez

Back in July of 2015, Foreign Affairs Minister Wilfred Elrington visited Mexico in an official capacity where he signed on to nine bilateral agreements with his Mexican counterparts. While functional cooperation has been taking place with our northern neighbor for decades, the agreements put in place a legal framework for the execution of a number of initiatives in health, security, agriculture, trade and education. Ambassador Carlos Quesnel Melendez explains.

Carlos Quesnel Melendez, Mexican Ambassador to Belize

“The first agreement during the visit of Mister Elrington is July of last year was an agreement cooperation between the Institute of Social Security of Mexico and the Social Security Board of Belize. Another agreement was industrial property cooperation between the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property and the Belize Intellectual Property Office. A memorandum of consumer protection between the Mexican protection agency and the Belize Bureau of Standards. A memorandum of academic cooperation between the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center (the 5C’s) and the University of Tamaulipas. A cooperation agreement between the University of Mexico and the University of Belize. Another cooperation agreement between the Belize Zoo and the direction of Mexico City Zoos that depends on the direction of ecological parks and wildlife of Mexico City. And agreement of innocent passage through the territorial Belizean sea and units of the Belizean Coastguard service through the territorial sea of Mexico. The establishing of a moratorium on drilling and the extraction activities of hydrocarbons. An agreement between aeronautical authorities and we also signed some agreements after the visit of Mister Elrington; we signed a memorandum of understanding between the Ministry of Health of Belize and the Belize Cancer Society and the Health Services of Yucatan to provide medical care to children with cancer. And finally, just last week, the Ombudsman of Belize, in a visit to Mexico, signed an agreement with the national human rights commission of Mexico and we are very happy with that visit. Quintana Roo specially offers cooperative programs such as the health campaigns in both locations, among many other programs. They offer us to train and support various diseases such as Chikungunya and dengue. We received a good number of students from Belize, especially Quintana Roo. So these relationships is very strong in many different areas and that motivates us to work very close to these states in the southern part of Mexico.”