Today social workers and community rehabilitation officers attended a conference was on refugees. Now, lately, Belize hasn't been accepting any refugees, but the refugees department was re-established in 2016. Now, today at the Radisson, the United Nations High Committee on Refugees held a meeting to sensitize social workers to refugee issues:...
Kelleen Corrigan, UNHCR Protection Officer
"We are here today from UNHCR in a collaboration with the Refugee Department and the Ministry of Human Development to provide a seminar for some of the officials from the ministry including social workers and community rehabilitation officers and the point is to discuss refugee land policy and some of the human rights aspects to help do 3 things, I think really to have an interchange with the officials to understand how they might become in contact with persons who would be refugees and to understand what's happening a little bit better to share information about what a refugee is and some of the processes that exists and then really just to discuss other ways that we can provide additional support to the authorities and the persons here in particularly who are dealing with under the Ministry of Human Development and something that we can be doing to help support them."
"The Ministry of Human Development is sending the officials that they believe they would get the most out of this and so. We understand it's mostly social workers and community rehabilitation officers in the various departments within the ministry who would be dealing many times with individual cases or families and children and who may or not be refugees."
"What is happening now is since 2015, Belize has re-initiated its refugee's eligibility committee. In 2016 they establish the refugee department and are now having the processes in place to adjudicate asylum seeker claim. So person who may be refugees who have fled their homes for reasons of persecution, violence and that type of thing. So the process has recently restarted again and so our role is to really help support the government to do what they need to do and to help them be able to best provide for the rights of the persons who are refugees in Belize."
"Our understanding is that the main country is where persons are coming from are El Salvador, Honduras and to a lesser extent Guatemala."
"Recently UNHCR came out with the global trends for the 2016 and unfortunately it was the year that had the highest number of persons who were simply displaced from their homes including refugees, including internally displaced persons and stateless persons. So unfortunately it's something that's happening around the world and there is a need for collective action to determine how to best respond to it and that's part of our role to help supports states to do that."
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