Belize evolved through several stages of decolonization, from universal adult suffrage in 1954 to a new constitution and internal self-government in 1964, when George Price, a middle-class Roman Catholic intellectual of mixed Creole and mestizo ancestry, became premier. Unrelenting Guatemalan hostility, however, impeded independence. In the 1970s Belize took its case for self-determination to the international community, appealing to the United Nations (UN) and joining the Nonaligned Movement (see neutralism). Although the dispute between Guatemala and Great Britain remained unresolved, Belize became independent on September 21, 1981, with a British defense guarantee, and was admitted to the UN.

The British military presence was withdrawn in 1994, and border security became the sole responsibility of the Belize Defence Force, which had been created in 1978. By the early 1990s Guatemala had formally recognized Belize as an independent state, and Belize had joined the Organization of American States (OAS); however, the territorial dispute heated up again in the late 1990s. In 2002 an OAS-assisted facilitation process formally proposed a solution, but Guatemala refused to accept it. In 2005 the two countries agreed that if a negotiated settlement proved to be impossible, the dispute could be settled by an international legal entity.

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