Indigenous Land Rights Talks Continue in South Belize

The Ministry of Indigenous People’s Affairs has been holding meetings with Maya and Garifuna communities in southern Belize to further discussions on the issue of land rights. Over the past few months, Minister Dr. Louis Zabaneh and his CEO, Chester Williams, have been holding discussions with communities to hear their concerns and discuss matters such as compliance with the Caribbean Court of Justice’s consent order with respect to Maya indigenous lands. CEO Williams was a guest on the Morning Show today and gave an update on how those discussions have been going. 

Chester Williams, CEO, Ministry of Indigenous People’s Affairs: “We have had several meetings with the Mayan leaders in Punta Gorda Town trying to see how we can strike that middle ground because they were at a stalemate where the ministry before wanted certain things and then that Mayans wanted certain things. And so there was that communication breakdown between the two sides. Again with Dr.Zab’s approach we have been able to go in and have cordial discussions and see how we can compromise on certain issues and they compromise or certain issues so that we can continue to dialogue because we cannot remain at a stalemate. Again as a part of that we had to look at the interest of the third parties, how are we going to address that and so last week we had the meeting in PG where we met with the persons who are regarded as third parties some of them have title to lands within the proposed Mayan declared areas. Some of them have lease to land in the declared areas and so the question is how do we address those people concerned. We’re not at a position yet where we can say this is what we will do or that is what we will do. We’ll need to have more meetings to determine the parties and then we’ll have to have a meeting with third parties and the Mayans together. We’re hoping that we’ll be able to have that meeting very soon where we can discuss among ourselves to see what compromises both sides may wish to make.”

Williams says that a major development with respect to meetings with the Garifuna community is the revision of an existing memorandum of understanding between the government and the National Garifuna Council (NGC).

Chester Williams, CEO, Ministry of Indigenous People’s Affairs: “Apart form the Mayans we have also met twice with the National Garifuna Council. Again, you’d know that the Garifuna people also see themselves as indigenous and so we’re in dialogue with them to see who we can work with them to be able to have certain rights for them. If it is something that we can do without going to court that is going to be good and so far the discussions with them have been going quite well. They’re currently working on an MOU that they’ll present to us and once that is presented to us the minister is going to take that to Cabinet and then we’ll see what Cabinet’s take is going to be on it. There are a number of things that they are asking us to look at for them and everything that is brought to us it goes to Cabinet through our minister and then we see how we go from there. But again it is important for us to ensure that we work together, that we talk with each other not at each other and I think that is what we have been doing and it’s going well.”

Williams says that the CCJ will be holding a compliance hearing on Friday, July 25, to receive an update on GOB implementation of the consent order.