The Universal Periodic Review – may sound like an oddity, but is a process where All 193 United Nations Member States are assessed periodically of their human rights records.
For the review, each country must show the actions that they have taken to improve human rights situations in their countries, and the challenges they face to do so.
Well, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is tasked to prepare second Belize's UPR, and for the last few months, they've been in consultation.
Today, the Foreign Affairs Ministry hosted a Validation meeting in Belmopan where all the members of the public who are concerned can have an opportunity to provide input on this document, which is in its final draft stage.
7News attended, and we saw the consultation in action, where the CEO of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained how the UPR draft has been progressing.
Alexis Rosado - CEO, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
"This is a process that started back in February and is about to be completed. When we met in February to launch the periodic process we had a time table which we shared with everybody. Since then we have been meeting with various groups, we've had consultations sometimes and a number of times; we met with a number of people in that period and we heard their views, we collected data and facts and we have put it all together in this draft. Now the process requires for us to complete this before July 22nd - that is our dealing to submit it to the Human Rights counsel."
And as you saw, LGBT activist, Caleb Orozco, and his adversary Belize Action representative, Pastor Scott Stirm were in the same room. Today, at the forum, Pastor Stirm, voiced his concern over a section of the draft which he reviewed. Here's how he explained it:
Pastor Scott Stirm - Belize Action/Jubilee Ministries
"I am red flagging in the strongest way possible because of the moral implications, the family implications because of this HIV testing for kids under 16 without their parents consent - the bypassing of the parental authorities so I want to register that definitely in the strongest way possible. Some of the other areas I believe needs to be - we need to know exactly what's going to be advanced because of this UPR that will be going forward."
Ministry of Foreign Affairs must have the final draft of the document prepared by July 22, 3 weeks from now.
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