National Birth Registration Consultation Held

A national birth registration consultation was held today in Belize City. Agencies such as UNICEF, UNHCR and the British High Commission partnered with the government to bring together all stakeholders to achieve three main goals. First, the government is seeking to build stakeholders’ awareness and understanding of the National Birth Registration System. Secondly, the consultation was held in order to build consensus on the recommendations and approaches to modernize Belize’s Birth Registration System. And lastly, participants were tasked in defining the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders in the modernization process. Attorney General Michael Peyrefitte says he is ready to implement any idea that he believes would make the process easier and more effective.

Michael Peyrefitte

Michael Peyrefitte, Attorney General

“I am committed to implement any good idea right now. I suggested that they make or provide for themselves no limit as to how they could analyze this issue. If we have to make it an offence for people to not register births of children then we might have to consider that. It is important to understand that you must do that. We are tired of hearing the public complain but at the time we know that a lot of the public is responsible for the many difficulties that they have when they go to these offices.  If your registration was not on time, was not properly done in the beginning how can you expect twenty-five years later for it to go smooth when you go into the office. What we want to do to try and solve this problem by going back to basics, going back to the beginning. This is how you must register your child. You must register your child by a certain time. You must register that child in a certain way. Hopefully if we can implement that right away we can eliminate a lot of the problem that we are having now, fifteen to twenty years from now.”