Be­lize Prime Min­is­ter John Briceño has blamed the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty for fail­ing to ad­dress the world’s prob­lems, stat­ing that if the Unit­ed Na­tions has “fall­en short of its promise, it is be­cause too of­ten its mem­bers — in­clud­ing the most pow­er­ful among us — have failed to act”.  

Briceño said the con­se­quences are vis­i­ble in six nu­clear pow­ers be­ing drawn in­to con­flicts in Asia, Eu­rope and the Mid­dle East, as well as a bal­loon­ing glob­al mil­i­tary spend ris­ing to more than half the gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.  

He said the con­flicts in Gaza, Ukraine and Su­dan demon­strate a pat­tern of dis­re­gard for in­ter­na­tion­al law, im­puni­ty and cyn­i­cism. 

Briceño said Be­lize has act­ed with re­straint through the chan­nel of the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) in the face of ag­gres­sive ac­tions by Guatemala.

 “Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean are com­mit­ted to main­tain­ing our re­gion as a zone of peace, where con­flicts are pre­vent­ed through di­a­logue,” he said. 

In this nexus, the Be­lize Prime Min­is­ter ex­pressed con­cern over the use of “mil­i­tary tac­tics” against civil­ian ves­sels in the Caribbean Sea.  

On cli­mate change, he said that Be­lize is the fifth most vul­ner­a­ble Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing State to cli­mate risk.

“Ris­ing seas are al­ready dis­plac­ing some coastal com­mu­ni­ties, ex­treme heat strains our en­er­gy sys­tems and un­pre­dictable rain­fall threat­ens our farm­ers,” said Briceño,  call­ing for “ur­gent at­ten­tion” to the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Agen­da for Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS), main­stream­ing the Mul­ti­di­men­sion­al Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty In­dex, and ex­pand­ing grants and con­ces­sion­al fi­nance, in­stead of debt. 

He said that, at the thir­ti­eth UN Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence in Belem, Be­lize will urge the Group of 20 (G20) — re­spon­si­ble for 80 per cent of emis­sions — to com­mit to more am­bi­tious emis­sion-re­duc­tion tar­gets.  

Briceño urged that de­vel­oped na­tions mo­bilise US$1.3 tril­lion in cli­mate fi­nance in pri­ori­tis­ing SIDS. 

He lament­ed that on­ly one per cent of cli­mate fi­nance goes to SIDS, while the fos­sil fu­el in­dus­try re­ceives tril­lions of dol­lars an­nu­al­ly in sub­si­dies, which is “not just per­verse, it is dan­ger­ous”.  

Call­ing for more in­vest­ment in “na­ture-based and na­ture-pos­i­tive so­lu­tions”, Briceño he un­der­scored that on­ly five years re­main to achieve the UN’s Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals (SDGs).

UNIT­ED NA­TIONS, Sep.  27,  CMC –

CMC/nk/kb/2025