WHEN Caribbean Community Heads of Government assemble in Suriname next month for their first Inter-Sessional Meeting for 2012, they would be expected to give priority consideration to the serious threats posed to the physical safety of the region’s citizens and social and economic development by spreading violent crimes as highlighted in the just-released Caribbean Human Development Report for 2012 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has already indicated her intention to have the UNDP’s findings on rising violent crime, including terrifying gang-related gun violence, used as a “guide” to arrest a very disturbing pattern in the region.
How Persad-Bissessar, the Heads of Government’s lead official for crime and security, seeks to do so should be quite interesting since precious little of substance is often shared, without prejudice, with the region’s people for a much more concerted and enlightened anti-crime battle.
Emphasizing the need to “shift to better citizen security”, the UNDP’s document drew from inputs by 11 500 interviewees in seven CARICOM member states: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Jamaica, Guyana, Suriname, St Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago.
Its general conclusion points to a substantial increase in gang-related gun crime, with increasing involvement of youth, over the past 12 years in the Caribbean. In the assessment of UNDP administrator Helen Clarke, the report emphasizes the need to “rethink approaches to tackling crime and violence and providing security on the ground . . .”.
Basically, to focus on citizens’ security and address causes of the more recent mushrooming in gun-related gang violence that wastes lives and spreads fear.
It is to be hoped that in considering initiatives for “new approaches”, as suggested, CARICOM governments, having established crime and security back in 2006 as the “fourth pillar” of the region’s economic integration movement, would endeavour to promote more enlightened interactions between community-based organizations and security forces to combat the menace of violent crime.
Relevant segments of the report, if not the entire document, could perhaps be made available to civil society organizations with some guidelines on forging anti-crime partnerships consistent with strategies envisaged by the authors of this UNDP document.
Hopefully, it would prove a useful working tool in helping to beat back the criminal gangs that have so badly tarnished the reputation of the Caribbean through wasting lives and ruining the welfare of law-abiding citizens in too many CARICOM jurisdictions.