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Photo: Shakira Sutherland, Executive Director, National Council for Families and Children
By Charles Gladden
Belmopan, Thursday, August 29, 2024
The National Commission on Families and Children (NCFC) held a reform conference to end child marriage in Belize on Thursday, August 29 in Belmopan, Belize
A campaign for reform aimed at ending child marriage was first proposed during a debate in the Children’s Parliament last year, sparking interest among lawmakers in setting the legal age of marriage in Belize to 18.
Shakira Sutherland, executive director of the Belize Commission for Families and Children, said statistics show that child marriage is very common in Belize, mainly among indigenous communities in the Stan Creek and Toledo districts, especially in rural areas.
“Children who marry early face all sorts of different challenges, so we want to do our best to avoid those challenges in order to create a better future for all of our Belizean children,” she said.
“We have the second highest rate of child and early marriage in the Caribbean. So this is a warning sign for our country and so we took this opportunity to amend our legislation,” she added.
Besides calling for an end to child marriage, the conference also stressed on changing the age of consent from 16 to 18.
“This stems from the Children’s Parliament last year; this is the bill that the children debated. They wanted to change the legal age from 16 to 18; so it’s just a work in progress that we’re supporting and making sure the children’s voices are heard through us, you know, developing and supporting these pieces of legislation,” Sutherland said.
Reform movement conferences were held throughout the country, with Belmopan being the last location.
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