An Update on the Maya Communal Land Rights Consent Order

Dolores Balderamos Garcia

Minister Balderamos Garcia also spoke about the progress on the consent order issued by the C.C.J. in terms of the communal land rights case won by the Maya people in the south back in 2015. With a new commissioner, in the person of attorney Greg Ch’oc was recently installed, the minister says that they have hit the ground running to ensure that progress that should have been made from the Barrow administration are now in motion.

Dolores Balderamos Garcia, Minister of Indigenous People’s Affairs

“The issues are complex because we have to achieve a delicate balancing act; on the one hand, we can’t give away everything in Belize to Maya people, Garifuna people or to anybody. But on the other hand, we have to recognise that because there are customary land rights, then we must do things in a different way. And this is why you have what is called the free prior informed consent protocol which we are now working on and we have to report back to the Caribbean Court of Justice on that. So the issues will be complex, but I believe that working together, we can achieve a way of living together because many of the Maya people themselves are not all that keen to have everybody having communal land customary land rights everywhere you go. Many of our Maya brothers and sisters would like to have their own piece of land, their own lease, their own title. And I would never be here to stop that, but at the same time, the method in which we go about it would be maybe a little bit slower, but also doing it in a way that we do not mash anybody corn or step on anybody toe because of the ruling of the court that Belize is a signatory to.”