By Dylan Vernon, TIME COME #24, 2 October 2025.

For this offering of TIME COME, I share the letter I wrote to the Constitution and Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives on 29 September 2025 with my views on the Belize Constitution (Thirteenth Amendment) Bill, 2025. It is in effect, Part 2 of my post of 28 July 2025 titled 13th Hour for the 13th Amendment?  

Most keen observers predict that the13th Amendment Bill will be enacted despite the strong and reasoned objections of key stakeholders in our society. If so, it will confirm that this government will not only continue the ‘mano dura’ approach to addressing citizen insecurity, but is expanding it. This would be dangerous constitutional backsliding. Witness the hard handed actions of elements of the state in actions such as the recent Budna case. The underlying message to the security forces, that would be reinforced by the 13th amendment, is that crossing the ‘human rights line’ to address criminal elements can be OK. As in the Budna case, rouge elements may become even more emboldened to engage in actions that violate the constitutional rights of citizens.

I implore our government to move back from this slippery slope and to wheel and come again with a longterm all-of-society plan. Stop the 13th! If the House does pass it (three-fourths majority needed), the Senate will be the final bulwark. The Senate, in this fundamental rights case, must concur or the Bill is dead.

My letter to the House Committee is below and contains links to more details on my views.

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29 September 2025

Dear Honourable Members of the Constitution and Foreign Affairs Committee:

I write to your Committee in my personal capacity to share my considered perspective that the Belize Constitution (Thirteenth Amendment) Bill, 2025, herein called ‘the Bill’, should be withdrawn.

In essence, the increased use of state of emergencies (SOEs) over the past two decades is a public admission of our collective failure as a nation to address worsening criminal activity in Belize. This failure is now chronic, society-wide, bipartisan and systemic. The Bill addresses none of these well, if at all. On the contrary, the Bill is another band-aid solution that comes outside of a comprehensive approach to improve citizen security. Alarmingly, it also contains elements that would threaten existing constitutional human rights and protections.

More specifically, I object to this Bill for the following reasons:

A: Poor Process

1. Out of the Blue: Substantive constitutional amendments, especially when they deal with fundamental rights and freedoms, should come from prior public discourse or, at least, manifesto policy commitments. This Bill came from neither. Addressing the concerns identified in the Bill would have benefited greatly from a ‘white paper’ approach to inform the public on this issue and to solicit input prior to the Bill.
2. Non-existent Public Education: Robust public information and education are pillars of participatory democracy. Failure on Point#1 made comprehensive public education even more imperative and this did not occur. Most Belizeans do not know about the Bill and its contents.
3. Ineffective Consultations: On this measure, your House Committee has also failed. Insufficient time and resources have been allocated to consulting the Belizean people – the single most important step in a constitutional amendment process. The three consultations held were not well advertised, too formal and poorly attended.
4. Outside of the Constitutional Review Process: The People’s Constitution Commission (PCC) Act mandated a comprehensive constitutional review which is not yet completed. That the Bill is presented before the Report of the PCC is even considered by the National Assembly is backwards in process as well as in substance – since the PCC Report does apparently contain recommendations of relevance to the Bill.

My further views on the process can be found in my blog, 13^th Hour for the 13^th Amendment?

B: Weak Justification

1. No Concerted Approach: A Bill to address our citizen insecurity cannot be seriously considered outside of a wider and long-term vison and plan. If the Bill had been justified as one immediate measure, to be taken in concert with a comprehensive raft of short-term, medium-term and longer-term policies and actions over a fixed period, its elements could have been better assessed.
2. Not Evidence-based: Because no informed analytical document accompanied this Bill, its justification is murky and messy. Apart from some very basic numbers in terms of some crime statistics (teased out by the media), there has not been any comprehensive analysis of the impact of the 18 public emergencies referenced in the Bill. How does one justify their further use? The National Assembly should not legislate by instinct or opinion but by informed analysis.
3. On Legal Uncertainty: It is true that two recent High Court judgements on the claims of individual of the violation of their rights during state of emergences (SOEs), yielded two divergent opinions. For sure, this legal uncertainty needs to be addressed. But why is a rushed amendment of our Supreme Law the first option? The Constitution already provides a judicial process of appeals to the Court of Appeal and, thereafter, to the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) to resolve legal uncertainty. Why the sudden urgency for this Bill – especially when fundamental rights and freedoms are at stake?  

C: High Risk for Abuse of Rights

1. Abuse of Rights: If enacted, the Bill could have the effect of abuse of citizens’ rights by the state, including that of the right to due process. This point has been compellingly argued by others, including the Association of Defense Attorneys (ADA) and the Belize Network of NGOs (BNN) in their submissions to your Committee.
2. Retroactive Abuse of Rights: Additionally, if the constitutionally established judicial appeal process were to judge that human rights were violated by the state (in the cases referenced in the Bill), what of the rights of those who want to claim violation of their rights during past SOEs?

Honourable members of the House Committee, while the Bill falls based on these and other substantive arguments of process and effect, there may be aspects of the Bill that could be considered on separate merit. For example, a Gun and Gang Court could be a good idea; but burying it in the offensive aspects of the Bill dilutes substantive public debate on its merits.

Belize does, indeed, need a constitutional reform debate on how our society should best use state of emergencies. However, we need constitutional amendments that strengthen, not weaken, the provisions that protect the human rights of all Belizeans. This Bill goes backwards in this regard.

When a substantive debate does happen, we need to consider reforms that (a) increase the threshold for declarations and extensions of public emergencies, and that (b) place greater limits on how our security forces are used during different types of periods of public emergencies. For example, declarations related to major civil unrest, terrorist threats and organised drug trafficking could be made to require a three-fourths majority in the House and the concurrence of the Senate. See my blog for my further views on the use of periods of emergency.

Honourable members of the House Committee, this Bill should be withdrawn. In its place, the government should announce and lead an all-of-society and all-party process to develop a comprehensive plan (short-term to long-term) to address the worsening state of our citizen insecurity. How we, as a society, use state of emergencies would be but one part of this national debate and this collective national action.

Sincerely,

Dylan Vernon

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