Belize is No Longer 1 of Top 10 Most Murderous Countries in the World

A recent report by Insight Crime suggests that the murder rate of Belize has decreased from one hundred and twenty-five homicides recorded in 2021 to one hundred and thirteen in 2022. That brings Belize’s homicide rate to twenty-five point six per hundred thousand. It’s good news for the country and the work of the Belize Police Department, and by extension, the Ministry of Home Affairs, as ComPol Chester Williams confirms that Belize is no longer one of the top ten most murderous countries in the world. He contributes the decline to a multisectoral strategy to address crime.

Chester Williams

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police

“It is all a result of hard work, dedication and commitment on the part of the police department and the partner agencies that work very closely with us. As you would know, we piloted the multisectoral approach to fighting crime last year and that module do incorporate the assistance and support of other governmental and non-governmental organizations where we are not just looking at addressing crime from a response standpoint, but to be more proactive dealing with the symptoms of crime.  As you would know there are several factors that would drive individuals to committing crime and so what we are doing from the multisectoral standpoint is to address those different factors with a view to prevent people from even getting an opportunity to become criminals because whatever needs they may have, we are trying to see how we can fulfil it by tapping into different agencies. So we have like the Ministry of Human Development with the pantry program; we have Ministry of Education which has now launched the free education on south side of Belize City so we are seeing more and more children going to school now so they are not on the streets, idling and being recruited by gang members. They are working towards becoming more educated and more productive members of society so those are things that go a very long way. The Ministry of Youth and Sports have been very huge in terms of support with the police department looking at sporting activities across the country to engage young people. I have always said that one of the best ways to intervene among rivalling people is by sports. Intervention through sports is always good. It gives these young men the opportunity for them to become more discipline, to interact with each other, to be able to discuss and getting to know each other better and that diffuses tensions. So, we are very grateful as to where we are now. Yes there is a lot of work that needs to be done and we are moving full steam ahead in making sure that whatever is there to be done is done. We are not in the celebratory mode as yet because, like I said, we have only piloted the project. We still need to look at other components that we are trying to launch this year. And we believe that once we launch those other components it is going to make it better and we are hoping that when 2023 comes to a close, we will be seeing better results than we did in 2022.”