Zero Tolerance for Domestic Violence

Dolores Balderamos Garcia

An extreme case of domestic violence was reported last week, a woman savagely beaten reportedly by her husband. The report has enraged the Belizean public and prompted the Ministry of Human Development on January fifteenth to issue a statement on the incident. The episode allegedly perpetrated by Joel Bardalez was condemned by the government, and a call to end domestic violence was made once again, amid difficult times being faced as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Minister Dolores Balderamos Garcia reiterated the government’s zero-tolerance position on domestic violence.

Dolores Balderamos-Garcia, Minister of Human Development

“We realize, as we said in the statement, that we cannot comment on every single incident of intimate partner violence or domestic violence, gender-based violence, whichever term that we use in the appropriate context, you know.  But we thought in terms of how terrible this latest report was, we felt that it was important to reiterate a zero tolerance policy of the ministry and all our partners.  You know, we have the National Women’s Commission.  We will be commissioning new commissioners shortly.  We have aspects of our ministry that have to respond to all cases of gender-based violence, whether it’s against elderly people, whether it’s against children, we have been receiving more reports of problems in the home dysfunction because of the COVID situation and people are in close quarters and there may be a lot of frustration.  Again, because of lack of jobs, you know.  But we felt that it was necessary for us to flag the fact that we have many partners.  Right now we have something called the Spotlight Initiative with several partners, including the United Nations partners that we have and several N.G.O.s.  We have our Women’s Commission, so we wanted to make sure that we keep highlighting the fact that the fight and combating the gender-based violence is never ended and it is ongoing and we all have to recommit ourselves because it is a surge that we have to try to reduce and wipe out if possible.”