## Facts

- Maya villagers from Santa Cruz and Conejo in Belize’s Toledo District, represented by their elected village leaders, claimed customary communal rights in lands traditionally used and occupied by their communities.
- The Government issued logging concessions and other natural-resource authorizations affecting areas the claimants identified as their customary lands.
- The claimants sought constitutional relief, alleging the State failed to recognize and protect their customary tenure while authorizing third-party activities inconsistent with their use and occupation.
- The Government denied that legally enforceable Maya customary land rights existed and argued that any such rights had been extinguished by colonial sovereignty and later State action.
- The consolidated claims were tried on the merits, with evidence on the existence and content of Maya customary tenure and on the State’s conduct.

## Issues

1. Whether Maya customary land tenure exists in the areas surrounding Santa Cruz and Conejo and creates legally cognizable interests in land.
2. Whether Maya customary land interests constitute “property” protected by the Belize Constitution and whether State conduct violated those protections.
3. Whether changes in sovereignty or later Crown/State actions extinguished any Maya customary land rights.
4. Whether, and to what extent, international human-rights norms may inform constitutional interpretation of property and equality guarantees.
5. Whether failure to recognize and protect Maya customary property, while protecting other property forms, constitutes unconstitutional discrimination.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Belize ruled for the claimants after finding overwhelming evidence of a functioning Maya customary land tenure system in the claim areas.
- The court held the claimants’ customary interests—collectively held and usufructuary in nature—constitute “property” protected by constitutional property guarantees.
- The court rejected extinguishment arguments, holding that successive changes in sovereignty did not, without lawful and express extinguishment, eliminate pre-existing Maya land rights.
- The court concluded the State violated constitutional rights by failing to recognize and protect customary land tenure and by authorizing concessions inconsistent with those rights.
- The court granted declaratory relief recognizing the customary property rights and issued injunctive-type orders requiring State measures to identify/demarcate/register the lands and restraining adverse governmental acts without the communities’ informed consent.

## Legal Principles

- Constitutionally protected “property” can include customary and collective land interests, not only interests created by statutory title or common-law conveyancing.
- Indigenous customary land rights may persist through changes in sovereignty unless lawfully and expressly extinguished.
- Courts may use international human-rights norms and findings as persuasive interpretive aids when construing constitutional guarantees of property and equality.
- A property-protection regime that effectively excludes an ethnic community’s customary property from recognition and protection can violate constitutional equality and non-discrimination guarantees.
- Effective constitutional relief for customary land rights may include declarations of title/interest and orders requiring affirmative State protection (including demarcation/registration) and restraint of incompatible authorizations.

## Conclusion

The Supreme Court recognized Maya customary land tenure in southern Belize as a constitutionally protected property interest, rejected sovereignty-based extinguishment, found constitutional violations in the State’s non-recognition and incompatible concessions, and ordered protective measures including demarcation/registration and limits on adverse State action absent informed community consent.


Cal v. Att’y Gen. of Belize, Claim Nos. 171 & 172 (Belize 2007)