The last six weeks have been a par­tic­u­lar­ly tor­rid pe­ri­od for this na­tion's chil­dren: On April 8, sev­en-year-old An­gel­i­ca Saydee Jo­gie, along with three mem­bers of her fam­i­ly, were se­ri­ous­ly in­jured by a jet ski while bathing at Pi­geon Point, the world-fa­mous beach in To­ba­go; on April 18, 2026, po­lice in east Trinidad com­mu­ni­ty of Cu­mu­to dis­cov­ered the bod­ies of 50 in­fants and six adults dumped in a mass grave at its ceme­tery; on April 19, nine-year-old J'Lay­na Arm­strong was among four peo­ple ex­e­cut­ed in car on the La­dy Young Road in Mor­vant; on May 7, 23-month Aki­ni Kafi was killed af­ter the car in which he was be­ing dri­ven to day­care was blocked and the three oc­cu­pants killed.

But the in­ci­dent that has shocked and trau­ma­tised peo­ple in To­ba­go and Trinidad is the dis­ap­pear­ance of two-year-old An­ge­lo To­bias-Plaza from his home in Good­wood, To­ba­go, at a time and in cir­cum­stances that are still in doubt.

These five in­ci­dents paint a ter­ri­fy­ing pic­ture of the state and wel­fare of chil­dren in T&T: They are sub­ject­ed to atroc­i­ties, abuse, ne­glect, are in ex­treme dan­ger of col­lat­er­al at­tacks on their care­givers and are not even safe when spend­ing leisure time with their fam­i­lies.

The threats to the na­tion's chil­dren oc­cur while trav­el­ling in cars, dur­ing or af­ter school—as in­di­cat­ed by the trend of vi­ral videos of school fights—and most dis­turbing­ly, in their homes.

While the full sto­ry of Ba­by An­ge­lo is yet to be told, the deaths of two mi­nors, the se­ri­ous in­jury to an­oth­er, the dis­cov­ery of a grave full of dead in­fants and the dis­ap­pear­ance of a tod­dler must cause a bright light to be shone on the na­tion's fu­ture—its chil­dren.

As these dread­ful threats to the na­tion's youngest and most vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens have oc­curred with­in a short pe­ri­od of time, the fo­cus of na­tion­al at­ten­tion must start by es­tab­lish­ing whether the in­creased harm to mi­nors con­sti­tutes a se­ries of one-off in­ci­dents or is the start of a trend in which more and more of our chil­dren are ex­posed to dead­ly vi­o­lence.

En­sur­ing the safe­ty of the na­tion's chil­dren must start in com­mu­ni­ties with peo­ple be­ing con­scious of the need to be their broth­ers' keep­ers, which means when they see some­thing, they say some­thing. Peo­ple who are aware of chil­dren in dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions must be em­bold­ened to re­port these to the po­lice, their pas­tors or to the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The au­thor­i­ty is a spe­cialised agency with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the care and pro­tec­tion of chil­dren, es­pe­cial­ly those who are at risk or have been vic­tims of abuse or ne­glect.

A Feb­ru­ary 2023 re­port of the Par­lia­ment's Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee in­di­cat­ed that the or­gan­i­sa­tion, which had a staff com­ple­ment of 236, re­quired 942 of­fi­cers in a pro­posed new struc­ture.

Giv­en that the Com­mit­tee was told that the Au­thor­i­ty re­ceived an av­er­age of 4,000 re­ports of abuse a year, an ap­pro­pri­ate place for the Gov­ern­ment to fo­cus its at­ten­tion would be to en­sure that the Au­thor­i­ty is ap­pro­pri­ate­ly staffed with em­ploy­ees who are mo­ti­vat­ed to cor­rect the many in­jus­tices met­ed out to chil­dren.

This is an area of crit­i­cal fo­cus for Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who has long demon­strat­ed an abid­ing in­ter­est in the na­tion's chil­dren, through her ad­vo­ca­cy for the Chil­dren's Life Fund and by plac­ing child af­fairs un­der the purview of the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter through the Gen­der and Child Af­fairs Di­vi­sion.