Mayas Say Government Bill Weakens Land Rights

The Maya people are speaking out tonight about the government’s draft bill on land rights, and they’re not happy. The Toledo Alcaldes Association says the proposed Maya Land Tenure Bill, presented during a Caribbean Court of Justice compliance hearing, falls short of what was promised. While the government calls this a step forward, Maya leaders argue it weakens their rights and drastically reduces the scope of their lands, despite repeated objections. Still, they say they remain hopeful and committed to protecting their communities, as required under the CCJ Consent Order and Belize’s international commitments. Senior Counsel Andrew Marshalleck represents the Government of Belize.

 

SC Andrew Marshalleck, Attorney-at-law

“So, where we are is that we identified a draftsperson who indicated a willingness to do the work within the twenty, twenty-five days that we have, in order to bring us to the third week of October and we’re finalizing the terms of the engagement. She has made some adjustments to the letter that we sent. We’ve made those adjustments and hopefully we can get that signed and a deposit paid today, and the work started without any further delay. Once that draft is had from the draftsperson, it goes to the review panel and the review panel can start their work in earnest. I understand that Professor Anaya and Moira Gracie are the representatives of the review panel for the appellants government’s representatives would be Minister Zabaneh and Minister Martinez, both of whom happen to hold PHD’s in their own fields, your honor, so that we have a review panel comprising four PHD holders. Hopefully, we get a magnificent review and result from that process. There is a Maya land policy document which sets out guiding principles and overriding objectives of the proposed legislation and we also sent a working draft to the proposed legislation as a way of indicating in more detail what it is we contemplated. That now goes to the draftsperson for fine-tuning, revision and confirmation of a draft bill.”