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The Human Development Report 2016, which was released last month by the UNDP says that Belize is doing better on the human development index than most of its Central American neighbors, but worse than most of its Caribbean neighbors.  

Of the 15 Caribbean nations that were reviewed, Belize was second to last - ranked 103rd out of 188 nations overall.  

But, in Central America, Belize ranked third behind only Panama and Costa Rica, and significantly higher than its neighbors Guatemala and Honduras.

And that ranking at 103rd, puts Belize in the bracket of nations with “high human development.â€￾  Belize was also ranked at 103rd in the last report.  

According to the report, “the Latin America and Caribbean region enjoys high levels of human development among developing regions, second only to Europe and Central Asia.â€￾  But, that hardly tells the full story since, when adjusted for inequality, the region’s index drops by almost a quarter due to the unequal distribution of wealth.  
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This includes women who tend to be poorer in Latin American and the Caribbean. 

And, women hold only 28 percent of the seats in parliament in the region, while only 37 percent of all legislators and senior officials are female.

Citizen security is also a key issue in this region, where the average homicide rate 21.6 per 100,000 people, is 14 times higher than the lowest rate in East Asia and the Pacific. The report notes that the region also has a very high imprisonment rate â€"  244 per 100,000 people â€" compared to 48 in South Asia and 88 in sub-Saharan Africa. In Belize, the rate is one of the highest worldwide at 449 per hundred thousand.  And the report adds that in ten Caribbean countries, the percentage of school-age boys who admitted their involvement in gangs ranged from 17 to 24 percent in 2012.