Progress Being Made in CCJ Consent Order
During the Sitting of the House of Representatives on December seventh, the Minister of Indigenous People’s Affairs, Dolores Balderamos-Garcia, said that Belize is progressing towards implementing the Caribbean Court of Justice Consent Order regarding Maya land rights. Minister Balderamos-Garcia also provided an update on the government’s development of a Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) Protocol and a Maya Customary Land Tenure Policy. The justices of the CCJ have said that they do not want to be dealing with this matter for more than ten years, which gives the government up to 2025 to finalize and implement the Consent Order. Spokesperson for the Maya Leaders Alliance and the Toledo Alcaldes Association, Cristina Coc, also says there has been progress.
Cristina Coc, Spokesperson, MLA/TAA
“There has certainly been progress. I think that our dialogue with the state has improved tremendously with the introduction now of, Mr. Andrew Marshalleck. I think that we’re listening to each other. Of course, very grateful to the Caribbean Court of Justice’s continued supervision to the implementation of this. I think that the government has realized that they can only delay this for so long. Right. Implementation is critical. It has to happen. It’s not optional. It’s an obligation. Belize has to recognize that it is a country that upholds the rule of law and they have to implement. How they go about doing it is what matters. If they, if they are willing to sit with us as equal partners at the table to look at how we jointly implement this historic decision we could see tremendous opportunities in it. But if we continue to come at each other from a very adversarial position then no one benefits and no one’s interest is served. And so we really appreciate that. The dialogues have opened. I think that that is very important. We are moving ahead with the demarcation of lands and territories. We look forward to the government’s continued involvement in that and serious investment in that. We also are moving ahead with the development of the Maya land tenure policy, which is going to set the framework for the legislation to protect Maya people’s property rights as Indigenous peoples. And I, I’m very happy to see that the government has made very special and concentrated meetings with government ministers to try to bring about greater understanding around Maya land rights because too often it’s just we hear it, but we don’t understand it. We don’t understand the international obligations of Belize as a nation state to protect and safeguard not just human rights, but indigenous people’s rights in particular. We recently had a hearing before the Inter American Commission Human Rights, where the government has agreed for the Inter American Commission to come and do a site visit and to help the general public, but also the people of Belize to really underscore the importance of human rights standards, indigenous people’s rights and to help to build that capacity in some way so that we can begin to, uh, diffuse the, the often, uh, misunderstandings around these rights. It’s not special rights. It’s not an entitlement. It’s not a privilege. It is, in fact, the protection of life, equality and justice for Indigenous peoples.”