Caribbean needs to stem illegal trade in small arms

(CNS): The Caribbean’s ambassador to the United Nations has said the region needs to address the small arms trade, which is causing intense violence in its communities. Speaking at the seventh general meeting of CARICOM and the UN in New York Monday, Irwin Larocque, CARICOM’s Secretary-General, said citizen security was of paramount concern as the “dimensions of the scourge of crime” increased and the region was plagued by the illegal trade in small arms. The Caribbean is a vulnerable transiting point which, he said, was wreaking havoc in communities, “terrorising neighbourhoods, claiming innocent lives, and compromising economies by undermining our investment climate and socioeconomic development efforts.”

Acknowledging that the community must do its part to help itself, he said the region has developed a targeted strategy to address the issue. The 2013 CARICOM Crime and Security Strategy was an important weapon in the Caribbean arsenal to fight the war against crime, he said, as he asked for the UN’s full support in its implementation, including through the long awaited re-opening of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Barbados.

During the recent CARICOM meeting in Trinidad, regional heads of government were urged to sign, ratify and apply the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty adopted earlier this year. It was also stated that plans to open an Interpol Liaison Office within the CARICOM Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS) and possibly transform it into a sub-directorate or regional sub-bureau would enable greater access to Interpol data bases by IMPACS. This was cited as demonstrating the international recognition of and support for the regional security architecture developed under the Fourth Pillar of the Community.

Member states also elected representatives to the newly-created Regional Integrated Ballistic Information Network (RIBIN) Board. The rising level of firearm incidents, combined with an ongoing reliance on manual traditional methods of firearms identification, has contributed a backlog of criminal cases across the CAribbean. The creation of the RIBIN will allow the region to share ballistic information making local police services better equipped to prevent and solve rising gun crimes. It will provide CARICOM states with the capacity to track guns and ammunition used in crimes and link firearms used by specific gangs and trace the connections in the organized trade in illicit guns and ammunition.

The growing crime situation for the Caribbean is being fueled by changes in the illegal drug trade. Experts believe that the Caribbean is an increasingly important transit route for drug-trafficking into the US as South American and Mexican drug cartels take advantage of the region’s economic problems and avoid the Mexican government’s crackdown on its own cartels and increased security on the US border.

According to the latest US statistics, about 9 percent of all illegal drugs that entered the country came through the Caribbean last year, about twice the rate in 2011. “The trend in recent years is that the Caribbean has re-emerged as a key drug-trafficking transit route,” said Daniel Sachs, an analyst at Control Risks, a consultancy told the UK press recently. “The security forces in these islands are woefully unprepared to respond to this evolving threat, particularly in the current debt climate.”

With cartels moving operations to the Caribbean, local gangs are supporting the drug trade and this has triggered a rise in violent crime, as guns and drugs flow into the region.

Recent media reports have also highlighted the startling increase in violence in Cayman’s Central American mainland neighbor, Honduras. San Pedro Sula, which is less than 82 miles from La Cieba, has been labled the most dangerous city in the world as a result of the number of murders in 2012 because of drug-related violence.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) threat assessment in connection with the influence of cartels in Central America and the Caribbean reported 62 clandestine air landing strips found in Honduras in 2012 and that cartels transported $4 billion worth of cocaine from Guatemala to Mexico in 2010, $1 billion more than all of Central America invested in 2010 in the fight against organized crime.