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belize

Results for belize

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Author: Gayle, Herbert

Title: Male Social Participation and Violence in Urban Belize: An Examination of Their Experience with Goals, Guns, Gangs, Gender, God and Governance

Summary: The report has ten chapters, divided into four sections. • The first is the Introduction comprised of the Research Design or methodology and the Critical Background. • The second section is an Assessment of the Human Ecology of Belize with emphasis on the urban centres, where social violence is concentrated. It is comprised of three chapters and is a discussion of the ‘pre‐conditional’ areas of the human ecology that contribute to social violence. These are the areas of a society that socialize and or nurture its populace: home, school and community. In the latter we have selected those institutions that comprise the central political authority, responsible for discipline, justice and equality. A breakdown in any of these institutions creates major crises leading to social violence. The third section is the Male Social Participation and Violence which is comprised of four chapters focused on the crisis of youth living in and affected by violence, with the emphasis on boys. The section begins with an Animated Life History of the very young children, ages 6‐13, followed by a PEER analysis of youth, then an Integrated Trauma Survey, and ends with a chapter on Gang Formation and Maintenance in urban Belize. The final section is the Summary and Suggestion.

Details: Belize City: Ministry of Education, 2011. 401p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 7, 2011 at: http://www.belize.gov.bz/public/Attachment/0112315573071.pdf

Year: 2011

Country: Belize

Keywords: Gangs

Shelf Number: 122677


Author: Lopez, Julie

Title: Organized Crime and Insecurity in Belize

Summary: In this working paper, López offers an in-depth look at the security landscape in Belize, a country too often ignored in regional policy discussions, but one which faces criminal challenges similar to those of its larger Central American neighbors. Combining policy analysis and journalistic accounts based on her recent stint in Belize, López examines the political, social, geographical, and institutional factors that have contributed to Belize’s role as a transit point in the international drug trade. She also discusses the rise of other illicit enterprises, including arms trafficking and human smuggling and looks at the impact of growing gang activity. Finally, López analyzes national policy alternatives being explored in Belize, such as marijuana decriminalization and a state-sponsored gang truce, and the particular challenges the country faces in integrating into the Central American regional security framework.

Details: Washington, DC: Inter-American Dialogue, 2013. 20p.

Source: Internet Resource: Working Paper: Accessed July 13, 2013 at: http://www.thedialogue.org/PublicationFiles/IAD9014_Belize_Lopez_Paper_FINAL.pdf

Year: 2013

Country: Belize

Keywords: Corruption

Shelf Number: 129393


Author: Interpeace

Title: National Public Policy Proposal: Prevention of Youth-Involved Violence in Belize 2012-2022

Summary: Over the last decade, Belize has been confronted by a significant increase in violence - mostly among adolescents and youths. Official statistics show that Belizean youths between the ages of 14 to 24 are getting involved in the illegal drug trade at young ages and dropping out of primary and secondary school at very high rates. As a result, they are overrepresented in prison populations and are increasingly the victims of violence. Much of the violence among this age cohort is attributed to drug-related gang violence. The proposal, titled National Public Policy Proposal: Prevention of Youth-Involved Violence in Belize 2012-2022 is based on a collaborative approach that draws from all sectors of Belizean society including the government, civil society and families. It gives a 10-year implementation framework that entails 17 strategies for addressing the underlying factors of youth-related violence. Several of these strategies are already being implemented. The strategies primarily address education as a means of empowering youths and reducing the vulnerability and marginalization of youths who are most at risk of becoming gang members. It also gives an integrated approach to confronting the risk factors of youths through suggesting initiatives that promote community participation, youth employment, and opportunities for citizen dialogue, education, sports, recreation, and culture. Aside from these prevention-oriented strategies, the proposal states the need for increasing the availability of reintegration and rehabilitation programmes for young people who have already become immersed in the culture of violence. The policy proposal serves as a tool to guide decision-making among both the Belizean state and civil society as programmes, projects, and interventions are developed and implemented. The contextual framework that takes the voices of young people into account can contribute to the implementation of the policy proposal in a way that best addresses the needs of the impacted youths.

Details: Geneva, SWIT: Interpeace, 2013. 101p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 17, 2013 at: http://www.interpeace.org/2011-08-08-15-19-20/latest-news/427-belize-proposal

Year: 2013

Country: Belize

Keywords: Drug-Related Violence

Shelf Number: 129422


Author: American Bar Association

Title: Assessment of Juvenile Justice in Belize

Summary: Through almost 40 interviews of many different actors and material gathered from all over Belize, we have tried to assess the needs of the juvenile justice system. We did our best to gather information from all stakeholders involved in one way or another with juvenile offenders, from the prevention and detention stages to imprisonment and release. This allowed us to learn the opinions and points of view of a significant sample of professionals involved in this area. We interviewed judges, prosecutors, police officers, community rehabilitation officers, social workers from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and even former offenders themselves with the objective to avoid imposing one single point of view, but to use the variety of different answers to the same question to inform the results. The questions involved legal but also practical considerations that will make it possible to analyze the weaknesses and peculiarities of the system at all levels. Interviews are one of the most efficient ways to gather information because they are fast, the participants add valuable opinions, and those interviewed know they will remain anonymous. Another source of information is the material we have gathered at the centers and institutions as well as the material participants were willing to share. However, this evaluation uses inductive and deductive reasoning that does not allow us to know with certainty how generalized specific bad practices are or if the illegal procedures, sometimes described, really happened. The main objective of the assessment is to create a critical analytical analysis, and not to condemn but to improve the juvenile justice system in Belize, thanks to the input of all the actors involved. We strongly believe that in Belize, as in other countries, any improvement in the system will bear medium term fruits by helping to decrease the adult crime rate, since some studies have concluded that working properly with juvenile offenders can reduce recidivism as much as 50%. Some stakeholders may disagree, wholly or in part, with the findings, but the aim is to create a debate where the same actors involved will be able to discuss ways to improve the juvenile justice system. We also wanted to make this assessment accessible to those unfamiliar with the Belizean justice system. The American Bar Association will convene and facilitate working groups beginning in November 2010, but most of the reform effort falls on the shoulders of the Belizean actors who will be asked to draft guidelines and recommendations for the benefit of the juvenile justice system and the whole society. The reality is that most justice systems in the world are not able to move forward without an internal, self-critical approach.

Details: Washington, DC: American Bar Association, 2011. 58p.

Source: Internet Resource: Rule of Law Initiative: Accessed July 17, 2013 at: http://apps.americanbar.org/rol/publications/belize_assessment_of_juvenile_justice_11_10_eng.pdf

Year: 2011

Country: Belize

Keywords: Juvenile Justice Reform

Shelf Number: 129429


Author: Southern Poverty Law Center

Title: Dangerous Liaisons: The American Religious Right & the Criminalization of Homosexuality in Belize

Summary: For most of American history, LGBT people in this country have been stigmatized, imprisoned, violently attacked and severely discriminated against. And today, they are still the population most likely to be victimized by violent hate crimes, according to the FBI. But the modern gay rights movement, which began with the 1969 explosion of frustration known as the Stonewall riots, has made unexpectedly dramatic progress, especially in the last few years. Discriminatory policies in the military and elsewhere have fallen like dominoes. Polling has shown huge and positive shifts in public attitudes toward gay men and lesbians. Thirteen states have approved same-sex marriage. And in June, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional the Defense of Marriage Act, ruling that legally married same-sex couples must receive the same federal benefits that heterosexual couples receive. At the same time, the Court overturned California’s Proposition 8, a ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriages in that state. All of this has left the American hard-line religious right, which spent decades demonizing LGBT people and working to keep them in the closet, on the losing side of a battle that it now seems incapable of winning. As a result, these groups and individuals have increasingly shifted their attention to other nations, where anti-gay attitudes are much stronger and violence against the LGBT community far too common. In places like Uganda, where legislators since 2009 have been pushing a law that would impose the death penalty for the Orwellian offense of “aggravated homosexuality,” U.S. religious ideologues have given aid and comfort to the authors of barbaric legislation. More and more, they are doing the same in other countries around the globe. Now, this international battle over the constitutionality of anti-sodomy laws has moved to Belize, a Central American country where the government and an array of far-right religious forces are defending the draconian statute known as Section 53, which punishes same-sex “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” with 10 years in prison. Though Belize is tiny, the battle has attracted numerous American groups — including the prominent Christian legal powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) — on the pro-criminalization side, providing advice to anti-gay bigots in Belize. The ADF is a serious organization. Founded in 1994 by 30 prominent Christian leaders in response to what they saw as “growing attacks on religious freedom,” the organization has an annual budget of more than $30 million, a staff of 44 in-house lawyers and 2,200 allied lawyers. Its board is stacked with luminaries not only from the religious right, but also with partners from powerful law firms and captains of industry. The ADF believes that religious freedom is under attack worldwide. It has in recent years built an international legal network and placed staffers overseas because it sees “a risk of winning a domestic battle while potentially — in time — losing the world.” Its website states that it is active in 31 foreign countries and describes a number of global initiatives. But it makes no mention of its criminalization work. There is great hypocrisy here. Surely such work, providing legal or other counsel to keep a law on the books that lands gay people in jail for consensual sex, violates the oft-stated principle of the religious right that their theology teaches to hate the sin, but love the sinner. Perhaps that is why neither the ADF, nor any of the other American religious groups involved in Belize, say a word about their involvement in the Belize case on their websites. They also refuse to speak to the press about the case. Their work is fanning the flames of anti-gay hatred that already exists in many of the countries where they are injecting themselves. As in Uganda, American groups have been propagandizing about the “recruitment” of young schoolchildren, the allegedly depraved and diseased lives of LGBT people, the pedophilia that is supposedly common among gay men, and the destruction of Christianity and the institution of marriage that they seem certain ending anti-LGBT laws will lead to. This vicious propaganda, born and bred by American ideologues, has found fertile soil across the globe. The Belize case is important. Overturning Section 53 could lead to the demise of similar statutes in a dozen other Caribbean countries that belong to the Commonwealth of former British colonies. This would mark a major stop forward in securing full human rights for the LGBT community. It also could affect the even larger battle of the United Nations to influence scores of countries that signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which took effect in 1976, to outlaw statutes criminalizing gay sex and to prevent anti-LGBT discrimination. In the United States, the issue of criminalization of gay sex abroad and similarly harsh attacks on LGBT people have split the religious right, leaving groups like the ADF that take extreme positions more and more isolated. In 2009, Rick Warren—one of America’s most prominent evangelicals, the author of the bestselling The Purpose Driven Life and the pastor of the Saddleback megachurch in California—denounced Uganda’s proposed death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality.” And in March, Focus on the Family spoke out against anti-gay proselytizing. “We’ve created an animosity,” the group’s president, Jim Daly, was quoted saying in The New York Times. “We’ve said we hate the sin and love the sinner. But when you peel it back, sometimes we hated the sinner, too. And that’s not Gospel.” Still, Focus’ vice president for government and public policy, Tom Minnery, sits on the ADF’s board, and the group has refused to comment on the situation in Belize. Focus’ position on criminalization may be ambiguous, but one thing is absolutely clear: What American groups like the ADF are doing amounts to pouring fuel on an exceedingly volatile fire. They are aiding and abetting anti-LGBT forces in countries where anti-gay violence is endemic. And as The New York Times wrote in a 2010 editorial regarding Uganda, “You can’t preach hate and not accept responsibility for the way that hate is manifested.” In Belize, the situation is so bad that the lawyers for the LGBT activist who filed the Section 53 case worry that they only have one plaintiff, and he could be assassinated at any moment. There could perhaps be no greater manifestation of hating the sinner, to borrow Jim Daly’s words, than bringing the full weight of the criminal law down on him or her. But that is exactly what the ADF and others involved in advocating for criminalization are trying to do. The leaders of these organizations should explain how their goal of protecting religious liberty and marriage requires countries to condemn members of the LGBT community to long prison terms. And Focus on the Family, like Rick Warren, should state clearly where it stands on the issue.

Details: Atlanta, GA: Southern Poverty Law Center, 2013. 26p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 8, 2013 at: http://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/downloads/publication/splc-report-dangerous-liaisons.pdf

Year: 2013

Country: Belize

Keywords: Bias Crimes

Shelf Number: 129596


Author: WildAid

Title: Turneffe Atoll Marine Reserve: Control and Vigilance System Design

Summary: This assessment represents the work of a multi-national team and was carried out in Belize over a 2-week period in March 2013. Research methods were developed and applied by WildAid in cooperation with the Belize Fisheries Department. Interviews were carried out with the following actors: Fishery officials, Belize Coastguard, Port Honduras MPA Administrators, TIDE, WCS, Belize Audubon Society, oak Foundation, members from both Northern and National Fishing Cooperatives, two Turneffe tourism operators, and Turneffe Atoll fishermen. The 2012-2017 Turneffe Atoll Management Plan proved invaluable as well. Despite both resource and time constraints, we are confident that sufficient information was collected to create a practical, yet versatile C&V system. The main objective of this assessment is to design a cost effective control and vigilance system for the newly created Turneffe Atoll Marine Reserve (TAMR). The specific objectives are: 1. Develop a practical control and vigilance system for the TAMR based on interviews of local enforcement actors, analysis of existing co-management strategies, and a comprehensive site visit of the Turneffe Atoll. 2. Prioritize a series of recommendations to optimize patrol costs as well as increase detection efficacy using Electronic Monitoring Systems (EMS). The final recommendations will include the surveillance system design including potential electronic systems, patrol vessels, human resource requirements, energy supply needs, and overall cost estimate: Capital Expenses (CAPEX) and Operating Expenses (OPEX) for a five-year investment plan

Details: San Francisco: WildAid, 2010. 45p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 2, 2016 at: http://www.wildaid.org/sites/default/files/resources/TurneffeAtoll_Assessment.pdf

Year: 2010

Country: Belize

Keywords: Crime Prevention

Shelf Number: 137740


Author: Peirce, Jennifer

Title: Gap Analysis Report: Citizen Security in Belize

Summary: In the face of rising crime rates and increasingly complex transnational and local criminal dynamics, Belize's limited institutional resources are overstretched. Youth violence and gangs are of particular concern in urban areas, where lack of education and employment options converge with the prevalence of guns and trafficking networks. Despite some promising smaller-scale crime prevention initiatives, a comprehensive crime prevention strategy requires more significant institutional reforms. This Technical Note reviews the current trends in crime and violence in Belize and the government's existing policies and programs in the sector. It then proposes several short and medium-term actions to strengthen the government's ability to prevent and reduce crime and violence, such as consolidating strategic planning and information management efforts, designing prevention programs more tailored to specific at-risk groups, bolstering criminal investigation and community policing resources, and adapting the corrections system to the specific needs of juveniles and gang-involved youth.

Details: Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank, 2013. 33p.

Source: Internet Resource: Technical Note No. IDB -TN-572: Accessed March 21, 2016 at: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/news/102313.AB-Belize-IADB.pdf

Year: 2013

Country: Belize

Keywords: Crime

Shelf Number: 138354


Author: U.S. Department of State. Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations

Title: Belize Engagement: Evaluation Report

Summary: CSO's evaluation of its engagement in Belize was the first formal evaluation conducted by CSO, and was conducted as an independent internal evaluation by CSO's Office of Learning and Training. The Belize engagement was a small innovative program to reduce gang activity and violence in Southside Belize City by developing mediation and community dialogue capacity. The evaluation found that mediation was very effective and showed promise for expansion, while community dialogue was resonating but making slower progress and institutional issues hampered sustainability. Recommendations of the evaluation inspired a second wave of programming to plug gaps in community dialogue training, train mediators more grounded in gang neighborhoods, and improve program management capacity of the local partner, as well as a grant from the U.S. Embassy to the local partner allowing it to hire dedicated staff. Community dialogues consequently grew eight-fold and mediators and trainers doubled. The Prime Minister praised the program for establishing "a sustainable, Belizean community-based approach to reduce violence." While other programs and factors likely contributed, the homicide rate in Belize City decreased by roughly 50% in 2013, though increasing in several other locations.

Details: Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State, 2012. 30p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 3, 2016 at: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/223248.pdf

Year: 2012

Country: Belize

Keywords: Community Mediation

Shelf Number: 138906