Ombudsman and human rights org. join forces

Since the Ombudsman’s office was opened in August of 1999 it has been working closely with the Belize Human Rights Commission. Today, both offices formalized that relationship in order to better defend the rights of the general public. The parties, in a memorandum of understanding, agreed to establish a joint understanding on how they can best work together in handling complaints against maladministration and human rights abuses, to educate the public on the role of both organisations and to improve the attitude of respect for all citizens including public officers and policemen. Ombudsman Paul Rodriguez says today’s meeting should have taken place 7 months ago.

Paul Rodriquez, Ombudsman

“There is no question of whether we want to work together, we do want to work together because we share the same ideals and goals. So what we want to determined, is set up the mechanisms to work together and when I showed them the Ombudsman Law and pointed out certain sections of the Ombudsman Law, they realized that this can be of certain help to them because the Ombudsman is empowered by law to investigate any ministry of government, any department, to ask for and demand that documents be supplied to me. So the Ombudsman has an amount of legal clout that the Human Rights Commission does not have, so they thought it would be beneficial for their work and we thought that it would be beneficial for us and for the country to work together.”

Rodriguez says since the Ombudsman’s office was officially opened, they have dealt with over 300 cases. Later this month Rodriguez is scheduled to attend a conference of Central American Ombudsmen in Costa Rica.