What is the Situation on Children Rights in Belize?

The United Nations International Children’s Fund held consultations this week as it works on the development of a situation analysis of children and women in Belize. The assessment and analysis show child-relevant dimensions of national development problems and points the way to possible solutions and priority actions, including informing policy dialogue and child-focused policy advocacy.  We stopped by at the session today at the Biltmore to find out more:

Mark Edberg

Mark Edberg, Consultant

“The situation analysis is basically a document that tries to present what is the situation in a number of child rights areas. So things like the right to protection from exploitation and violence or the right to education, right to social protection or participation. So for each of those domains, we need to get information. Some of that information is the data available from the Statistical Institute of Belize or Ministry of Health, we try and get that. But the other part of it is that we try to get input and feedback from people who are in community-based organizations or ministries or in other capacities so we can get sort of the real stories in some ways that will help us make sense of some of the data that we have. Also, to help us find other sources of information that we may not know about. So we’ve been doing the consultations. We did one in Corozal in the north. We did one in Dangriga. And the ones we are doing here are supposed to focus on Belize and Cayo. In those consultations, we go through the child rights domains and we ask about what is the situation. Is it better or worse than it was let’s say at the time at the last situation analysis and then we try to get some of the reasons? What a situation analysis does, this is basically UNICEF’s data that UNICEF will use to work with the Government of Belize and formulating a five-year plan about what to prioritize in terms of achieving child rights. Getting that information, not only about what are some of the reasons helps in pinpointing maybe we need to focus on this because this appears to be a reason. From that, we can work with UNICEF to make recommendations.”