Three years after the Briceño administration launched a dedicated body to spearhead Belize’s anti-corruption agenda, progress toward full compliance with the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) remains hampered by limited funding, personnel, and operational capacity, the agency’s top leader has confirmed.
In remarks ahead of a public discussion over the government’s commitment to rooting out graft, Cesar Ross, Director of the Good Governance Unit, outlined the structural challenges his young agency has faced since it was established in 2022 under the Ministry of Public Service, Constitutional and Political Reform. The unit was created specifically to drive forward Belize’s pledges to meet UNCAC requirements, but its incremental pace of work has sparked questions over whether the slow progress stems from insufficient government backing or a broader lack of political will to crack down on corruption.
Ross explained that the unit’s annual budgeting process forces the team to advance work one initiative at a time, rather than rolling out a comprehensive anti-corruption strategy all at once. When the agency was first launched, its baseline operating budget was crafted around the need to build out internal systems and establish a foothold within government. Each year, leadership assesses existing resources, identifies unmet needs, and submits funding requests for new projects, with separate budget allocations required for every individual anti-corruption initiative.
That fragmented funding structure, combined with a small core staff, means the unit can only expand its work gradually as new projects are approved and resourced, Ross said. He added that the agency has received support from a network of external stakeholders to fill some capacity gaps and keep progress moving forward despite the constraints.
The revelation comes amid growing global pressure on member states to follow through on their UNCAC commitments, with corruption widely recognized as a barrier to sustainable development, democratic accountability, and public trust in government. For Belize, which has positioned itself as a reform-minded state committed to good governance, the gap between the government’s anti-corruption pledges and the operational resources provided to its lead agency raises ongoing questions about the depth of its political commitment to meaningful reform.