Another complaint that the Maya made to the CCJ at yesterday's compliance hearing was the Briceno's Government's decision to scrap a Customary Land Tenure Policy, which the Mayan claimants and representatives of the Barrow Government labored on.
7News understands that the next step for this policy was that the then-Attorney General would submit it to Cabinet for final approval, and then accompanying legislation would be drafted. Yesterday, Leslie Mendez, the attorney for the Maya, informed the judges of the CCJ that the new government has made a unilateral decision that this policy was no longer a requirement for implementation.
Here's the back and forth in yesterday's hearing:
Hon. Justice Jacob Wit - CCJ Judge
"There is no reason given why it's not needed. It's a document that has been negotiated over a long period of time. There are all kinds of issues that, I think, were in that policy about how to deal with third parties. So, we do not understand why suddenly that policy is not needed."
Greg Ch'oc- Commissioner of Indigenous People's Affairs "During my consultation with the Julio Cho Society, I was given - and I requested all the documentation relating to the land tenure project. I was given a contract that the Julian Cho and the Alcaldes Association signed with [inaudible] for $80,000 to contract a drafter to develop the legislation. It seems to me that the delimitation principles were already taken off the table by virtue of that contract that was signed, that we're still trying to inquire where exactly consultancy is, whether there's a draft of the legislation. So, that was one of the reasons why a decision was that perhaps, it's no longer needed, and it was taken off the table."
Leslie Mendez - Attorney for Claimants
"This funding was secured because, in fact, the government was not in a position to fund it."
"What we're seeing here is unilateral decisions being taken about what are fundamentally breaches of an agreement that are not being consulted with the other parties."
Cristina Coc - Spokesperson, MLA/TAA
"We feel that none of these things are happening in isolation. Many of - including the FPIC Protocol, the Customary Land Tenure Policy, the Delimitation Principles, and Methodology, the 2018 agreements, these are all agreements that have been made between the Government of Belize and the Maya people and their chosen representatives. Now, this government is appearing to us to want to go back to ground zero, to scrap all these agreements that have already been concluded, where we have invested so much time in bringing them forward."
"We spent a number of years developing this policy, jointly with the Government of Belize, and it was concluded. We were told it was supposed to be taken to the Cabinet for final approval. Now, we waited for years, for that approval, only for this new government to come now and say, we don't need it. We're getting rid of it."
