And in other news, the poverty rate was over 50% long before the pandemic struck and COVID only sunk us deeper. Many residents became jobless, many children out of school. And today, UNICEF, along with SIB and the Ministries of Economic Development and Human Development held a stakeholder consultation during which the topic of child poverty was examined. According to the UNICEF representative here in Belize, it was while gathering data with SIB that they realized they could use the opportunity to tackle the root causes of child poverty:
Alison Parker - UNICEF Rep, Belize
"We realized that the data we're looking at the 2018 information that they had and we realized a increase in child poverty in that information. So, for us as UNICEF children are our mandate and we realize this was an opportunity to do a deep dive and zero in very specifically on what are the drivers, what are the root causes and what are the elements of deprivation for children. So, there were 2 elements we looked at, we realized that for SIB, the focus was on monetary poverty and that within the environment of the child, the child does not earn but it's within a household and so whatever happens in the household impacts on the child but if you look at the child individually as I earlier mentioned, there are issues that do affect children specifically and that's a driver for this report. This study looked at 5 key areas, it looked at education, health, access to water, access to sanitation and access to information and I think these are areas we have recognize that especially with COVID, the inequities between rural and urban, across districts can be more glaring as to who has access to education and part of this discussion we just had, we really noticed that for a number of the children, yes efforts were made to reach them with services but especially in the rural areas, they missed out on that and if a child is deprived of education, what's the opportunity for them for jobs when they become a young person? The competition is getting cleaner as the years evolve and if you have not had access to education, you've not had access to information or technology, you're going to be left behind."
And the CEO in the Ministry of Economic Development recounted how much poverty has grown in the last few years and what he hopes today's consultation will accomplish. Meanwhile, the CEO in the Human Development Ministry spoke about the importance of the collaboration between the stakeholders that met:
Osmond Martinez - CEO, Ministry of Finance & Economic Development
"The presentation was done with empirical data where it shows that between 2015 and 2020 child poverty in Belize district had an increase almost 15% and in the Toledo district, child poverty increased by 10.9%. This by itself speaks very poorly of where we are but what is more scary is we've had 4 poverty census, one in 2005, then 2002, 2009 and 2018 and from 1995 to 2002 there has been an increase in poverty, 2002 to 2009 an increase in poverty and 2009 to 2018 an increase in poverty, to the point that poverty in 2018 was at 52.8% is unacceptable where more than half our population is living below the poverty line. The main objective is to see how we can activate all the other stakeholders, bilateral, multilateral agents, civil society, private sector, NGOs and academia, so each and everyone should play a main role in helping to reduce poverty. At the same time, we have asked UNICEF to provide us with a consultant whereby we can do a social protection strategy but one that will be a very ambitious and where the consultant can be with us a little bit not just come and develop the project but one that will work with us for a period for at least 5 years to hold us accountable, other than that it will just be another document that will be on a shelf filled with dust and we don't want that anyone."
Tanya Santos - CEO, Ministry of Human Development
"It's a matter of collaborating, it's a matter of prioritizing the collaboration and the cooperation within the ministries with the support of UNICEF we're also embarking on a project that will develop the social protection strategy for Belize and it will be multi-dimensional as CEO Martinez mentioned, we have requested of UNICEF to provided an expert in that area for us in not only helping us in developing the strategy but to help us to maintain it's implementation and ensure that it's reaching it's targets. So, it has to be a collaborative effort, no longer can we continue to work in silos and in isolation of each, the goals have to be coordinated, they have to be targeted and the cooperation on the ground and at the policy level has to be efficient in order to reach the target of the children and address and reduce poverty."
