Attorney General Mike Peyrefitte recently came back from a seminar on Human Trafficking in Washington DC. A team of experts from Belize led by Peyreffitte and Minister of Human Development Anthony Boots Martinez, met with Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General for the United States Department of Justice - among others. The mission of the Belize team was to try to get Belize upgraded from a tier three trafficking country. That abysmal ranking comes from the US State Department - and Belize is one of only three countries in the entire Western Hemisphere on listed in tier three. Peyrefitte told us that Belize made very specific commitments:...
Hon. Mike Peyrefitte
"With that we said we didnt even verified the information to see if it's correct. You're talking about corruption, you're talking about government officials and I am asking them who? Name them, I will take it back and we can deal with those people with the evidence. So we try to have a full and frank discussion and we express our concerns and our desire to do better."
"Belize have the same amount of arrests, investigation and convictions for example Barbados or another eastern Caribbean country but yet they are tier one and we are tier three. So we were searching for what is the reason for the designation, the evidence doesn't support it by bygones are bygones and we will be graded again I think in March of 2018 and so we are taking the steps that are necessary that we deal to be within the spirit of keeping our sovereignty and pride to ensure that we are demonstrating that we are serious about human trafficking."
The US will next review Belize's human trafficking performance in the first quarter of 2018.
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