States of Exception: Policing, COVID-19, the 13th Amendment, and the Suspension of Human Rights in Belize

Abstract

This paper examines the rise and institutionalization of emergency governance in Belize through the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic responses, subsequent states of emergency in response to crime, the proposed Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and the 2025 High Court decision in Staine v. Attorney General. The paper situates Belize within the broader international context, touching on questions of sovereignty, surveillance, and rights. By drawing on Agamben’s theory of the state of exception, Foucault’s concepts of governmentality and biopolitics, and Mbembe’s examination of necropolitics. It shows how emergency powers are evolving into customary law, and spatialized policing tactics are now disproportionately affecting marginalized groups. The analysis foregrounds ethnographic evidence of how rights are lived and lost, showing the disjuncture between state narratives of crisis and the ordinariness of daily life. Furthermore, by placing these developments alongside Belize’s international human rights law obligations, it is evident that the Thirteenth Amendment risks constitutionalizing exceptionalism and creating geographical zones of suspended human rights.