Child Detention during a State of Emergency: RT v The Minister of Home Affairs et al

With its judgment in RT v The Minister of Home Affairs et al (Claim No. CV473 of 2024), the High Court of Belize has added to the growing body of Caribbean jurisprudence on the use of emergency powers.  The case was filed by the mother of a thirteen-year-old child detained during a State of Emergency (SOE) declared in response to a spike in violent crime in the country. Reflecting a broader regional trend of utilizing SOEs to combat gang violence, this declaration marked the sixth SOE implemented in Southside Belize City since 2020, and the second one in 2024 alone.

The claimant’s primary contentions were that:

1. A spike in violent crime was not enough to meet the constitutional threshold for an emergency to justify the draconian suspension of constitutionally protected rights.

2. Habeas corpus is non-derogable and in any event its suspension was a disproportionate and unjustifiable restriction that went beyond the exigencies of the declared emergency.

3. Even if the SOE was validly declared, the Government remained under an obligation to act in accordance with the best interest of the child and adhere to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

   
   

On the Emergency Declaration

On the challenge to the emergency declaration, the Court affirmed that courts retain supervisory jurisdiction even in matters affecting national security. Its role is to determine whether the Executive has acted within the four corners of the Constitution. The court explained that this is an objective inquiry, determining whether there is material capable of supporting the Executive’s subjective assessment of an emergency. The material should be capable of showing a situation “exceptional in scale, immediacy, and public-safety risk, rather than…ordinary criminality.” Following the decisions of other Caribbean courts, the court affirmed that “the SOE regime is not, in its constitutional conception, a substitute crimefighting mechanism, but an exceptional public-safety measure engaged where the scale and character of the threat exceed the capacity of ordinary law-enforcement responses.”  The mere presence of criminality, even of a serious kind is not enough; nor is it triggered by isolated or episodic incidents that fall within the usual remit of policing and criminal justice institutions. Nonetheless, on the evidence, the Court considered that the Government had established an emergency and upheld the validity of the SOE.

On Habeas Corpus Suspension

As regards the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, the Claimant argued that, notwithstanding the inclusion of the right to liberty in the list of derogable rights under the Constitution, habeas corpus cannot be suspended if the non-derogability of the right against inhuman treatment is to have any meaning. Relying on the Advisory Opinions OC-8/87 and OC-9-87 of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), the Claimant maintained that the writ cannot be suspended, even in times of war, public danger or other emergency because it is an essential judicial guarantee for the protection of rights whose derogation is prohibited. Put another way, the protection against torture and cruel and inhumane treatment, typically carried out in detention and the custody of another, cannot be guaranteed if the writ of habeas corpus is suspended. Accordingly, the non-derogability of habeas corpus is a necessary corollary of the non-derogable right against cruel and inhumane treatment. Alternatively, it was argued that suspension could only be justified under the most exceptional circumstances and the Government has not provided any explanation for the need to suspend the writ.

The Court disagreed. While accepting that the Government must still establish that the restrictions imposed were “reasonably justifiable” in a democratic society, the court found that the temporary restriction of access to habeas corpus under the Emergency Regulations was, in principle, capable of being justified as a measure directed toward preventing further serious harm.

On the Detention

The Court, however, upheld the challenge to the child’s detention on the basis that the detention conditions constituted cruel and inhuman treatment.  While upholding the child’s initial detention, the court found that the totality of the detention conditions, namely a 13-year-old child kept in solitary-like confinement, with minimal human contact, no educational or rehabilitative support, together with the psychological strain of indefinite detention, were cruel and inhumane. The court noted that the European Court of Human Rights and other international tribunals have repeatedly held that extended solitary confinement or near-total sensory deprivation, especially of a minor, can amount to inhuman treatment. The defendants’ failure to make any concessions for his youth or vulnerability rendered the conditions degrading to his dignity. He was essentially treated as a hardened criminal, not a frightened teenager. 

The right to protection of the law encompasses the paramount principle of the best interest of the child, established under Article 3 of the CRC and incorporated under the Families and Children’s Act, which requires States to consider the psychological, emotional and educational needs of a child in conflict with the law. Traditional objectives of the criminal justice system must give way to principles with rehabilitation and restorative justice. In this respect, the detention of a child must only be used as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period, with the child's best interests serving as a primary consideration.

The ruling underscores that even under a lawfully declared State of Emergency, executive discretion is not absolute, and the vulnerability of minors demands heightened judicial oversight and a strict application of the principle of proportionality. It should serve as guidance and a cautionary tale to prison authorities on the blind and wholesale application of internal prison rules. As the court remarked, it does not “lie in the mouth of Mr. Murillo [Prison Commissioner] to order a complete communication barricade of RT, a child, from access to counsel or his parent.” Prison rules are low-level regulations; they cannot overrule the Constitution, which explicitly guarantees a minor's right to speak with a parent and lawyer without delay.

Commentary

From a broader perspective, this case illustrates the systemic difficulties of translating structural vulnerabilities of children from marginalized socio-economic backgrounds into the rigid framework of a constitutional claim. On its face, the case was a textbook case of the racial profiling as understood by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). The IACHR has long warned that across the Americas, the default profile of a "suspicious person" is almost always a young Afro-descendant male. This bias triggers a vicious cycle of unwarranted police surveillance, hostile interactions, high arrest rates, and mass incarceration. When it comes to anti-gang crackdowns, this means children living in neighborhoods controlled by criminal networks are automatically branded as gang members themselves. Notwithstanding the circumstances of the child, his multiple interactions with police and the lack of any social intervention, the Court upheld the decision to detain the child, thereby associating him with gang members.

*Some of the findings are under appeal.