Legal info project debuts in Belmopan

The first phase of a new initiative designed to make legal information more accessible to the public was launched today in Belmopan. At brief ceremonies on the grounds of the Help for Progress building, the first of three legal information centres was opened. It=s part of a joint project of the Government of Belize, through the Attorney General=s Ministry and the United Nations Development Programme. Project Director Rondine Swift says the aim is to decentralize access to justice.

Rondine Swift, L.I.B. Project Director

?The purpose of the project is to set up legal information bureaus in Belize; to setup centres where people can come and get basic legal information that they may need and not know where to get it. For example people can come and find out about laws that affect them; if proper procedure was carried out during an arrest; how to adopt a child, how to acquire land; how to grieve complaints against employers or store owners or consumer problems. Anything that is of a legal nature that a Belizean wants to get an answer to, they can come to seek this information at the legal information bureaus at no cost.?

Swift says the legal information centres will be staffed by specially trained officers who have a basic background in law, but who are not lawyers and will not offer representation in court. The other two centres will be opened in Orange Walk and Dangriga. The entire project is budgeted at a hundred and twenty thousand dollars, with the majority of the funding coming from UNDP. On hand for the inauguration of the new Legal Information centre was former Attorney General Godfrey Smith, under whose tenure the project started.