Human Rights, Immigrants Rights & Flexibility

My interests include immigrants' rights and human rights. As the project develops between the Women's Department of Belize and Attorney Moore, gaining international exposure in both areas are being afforded to me in this IPSP(International Public Service Project).


Yesterday's joint meeting with the Women's Department (Michelle Irving-Director) and Attorney Antoinette Moore was very successful in mapping out a unified strategy for assessing domestic violence within the migrant community and community of Dangriga as a whole. Although my personal, larger interests are to evaluate aspects of immigrants' rights as it relates to domestic violence and access to services, a reality that has been revealed is that it is very difficult to effectuate change within the migrant community when the actual citizenry does not already have the right(s) afforded to them. The apathy within the courts, government and even among citizens as it relates to domestic violence as a whole is the overarching giant. As was stated in our two hour visit, a wholistic approach or examination of the reality of the problem is needed, if any traction is to be made to assist migrants.


One of the biggest concerns involve violent domestic sexual assaults. Looking from a human services and legal view, Irving and Moore indicate that within both the migrant community, and citizenry as a whole, sexual assaults upon the most vulnerable (children, women, boys and older men) have increased over the past few years. One of their major concerns is that because it is happening so frequently, the police, courts and even community are becoming more and more desensitized to the issue. In addition, the cases that do get reported and are lucky enough to make it to court still face hurdles of the legal system's lack of expertise or concern in prosecuting such cases. In order to begin the process, we decided that a thorough evaluation of domestic violence, with an emphasis on sexual assault, is needed.

LESSON LEARNED: The importance of being flexible and growing with the process. Although my initial plan was to focus solely on the migrant community, having the ability to allow the process to organically develop based on the needs of the local community is extremely important in public service. Understanding and improving domestic violence among citizens of Dangriga will inadvertently benefit the migrant community.

Todays' agenda was to include a trip to Punta Gorda with Attorney Moore to visit with the Indigenous Mayan community who, through the help of Attorney Moore and a team of professors/students from the University of Arizona James Rogers School of Law, recently won a Landmark human rights case in which the Supreme Court of Belize held that the Belize government's failure to acknowledge the customary land rights of the Maya villages violated their constitutionally protected rights to property, equality and life. Learn more at http://www.law.arizona.edu/depts/iplp/advocacy/maya_belize/index.cfm?page=advoc . However, due to the remnants of Tropical Storm Alma and other developing tropical storms in the region, the flight has been postponed.

By the way, I am doing just fine! It is very rainy here right now but no hurricanes are expected to develop, just lots of rain for today and tomorrow. So I am planning to stay in and get some research done.