If our Caribbean Community governmernts are serious about involving representative regional organizations and institutions in the challenging task of building partnerships to combat spreading crime and violence currently endangering national/regional security, then they should change their ways in communicating their policies and programmes.
This observation is made with a note of disappointment over the mere one-paragraph on “Crime and Security” located in a five-page communiqué released by the CARICOM Secretariat at the weekend on last week’s Inter-Sessional Meeting of Heads of Government in Suriname.
Ahead of the Suriname meeting, the DAILY NATION had editorially discussed on February 14 the implications of violent crimes for the physical safety of citizens, as well as the region’s social and economic development, outlined in a report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The editorial was titled Make UNDP Crime Report ‘Exhibit A’.
We return today to this very depressing issue of crime and security to underscore, among other concerns, an apparent lack of a cohesive regional approach that involves more than the political directorate of CARICOM and regional structures that seem geared to function according to state-driven bureaucratic norms that so often prove quite debilitating and unproductive.
To be informed that Heads of Government agreed at their Suriname meeting on “the need for a closer working relationship” among institutions and agencies dealing with crime and security for implementation of the “regional security agenda” makes it seem as if they are whistling in the dark.
After all, to give substance to their commitment to more effectively deal with “crime and security” in our comparatively small region with vulnerable economies that have to contend with organized crime in narco and human trafficking, as well as gunrunning, CARICOM leaders had decided in 2006 to establish “security” as the “fourth pillar” of the Community in 2006.
They subsequently established in 2007 a regional project, IMPACS (Implementation Agency for Crime and Security), headquartered in Port of Spain. Now, in 2012, when they are talking sweetly once more about “changing” policies and management structures to advance CARICOM, the leaders have pointed to the “need for a closer working relationship” among relevant regional institutions. Are they talking to themselves or indirectly pointing accusing fingers at faceless others for lack of intended progress?
There has also come out of the Suriname meeting disclosure that yet another group of “consultants” are assessing the crime and security situation in CARICOM and recommendations will be forthcoming.
Well, for now, some questions seem appropriate in the interest of public information. Who are these “consultants” and on what basis were they chosen? How was funding secured? What terms of reference were established? There is this related question: why were commissioned studies, done by leading Caribbean citizens and with recommendations on, for instance, “mature regional governance”, simply ignored and left to gather dust?