As a former colony of Britain, English is Belize's first language. But Spanish is spoken by at least half of the population. Though we are located in the middle of Central America, we share a common cultural heritage with our sister Anglo-Caribbean countries. Belize is therefore geo-politically poised as the natural bridge linking the two sub-regions of Central America and the Caribbean. It is a historical role we have embraced wholeheartedly.

As Belize harnesses its limited resources to meet the many challenges of the new millennium, we are forced, regrettably, to divert precious energies to dealing with a persistent claim to Belizean territory by our larger western neighbor: the Republic of Guatemala.

We would much prefer to focus our attention on building our institutional capacity and training our people to meet the international market trends in e-commerce and technology-driven industries. But we cannot afford to be cavalier about this claim because we are a nation of 250,000 with a tiny security force of less than 800 while Guatemala's Armed Forces (GAF) is 40,000.

Guatemala's claim is anachronistic. It says it "inherited" Belize from Spain who had colonized the territories of Latin America from the 16th century to the early 19th century. As the various documents on this site can show this is devoid of factual and legal merit. Despite the fact that Belize obtained its independence from Great Britain with the support of the U.N. in 1981 and Guatemala recognized our independence on September 5th 1991, Guatemala continues to flip-flop on the issue, dangling their claim, like the Damocles sword over the head of Belize.

On February 24th 2000, members of the Guatemalan Armed Forces (GAF) entered Belizean territory and kidnapped 4 members of Belize's security forces. This is the first time in our entire history that such a blatant act of violation has occurred. We are grateful to the swift actions of the international community that resulted in their release unharmed after a week.

But we are concerned that a pattern of incursion into Belizean territory by the (GAF) seems to be emerging. We have constructed this website so that the international community can monitor developments and keep abreast of the on-going negotiation process. We invite you to spend a few minutes on this site and hope that you will number among those who support Belize's right to territorial integrity and sovereignty.