Two of Cari­com’s 15 mem­ber states—Trinidad and To­ba­go and Haiti—have de­clared state of emer­gen­cies (SoE) eight days apart due to ris­ing mur­ders and gun and gang vi­o­lence.

Af­ter a se­ries of vi­o­lent gun at­tacks in Haiti’s cap­i­tal by gangs in a bid to oust Prime Min­is­ter Ariel Hen­ry, the gov­ern­ment had to im­ple­ment a 72-hour SoE and night­time cur­few in ear­ly March to curb the an­ar­chy and law­less­ness.

The SoE took ef­fect on De­cem­ber 22, 2024, and will end on Jan­u­ary 21.

Eight days af­ter Haiti de­clared its SoE, cit­i­zens in T&T woke up to the news Mon­day that a State of Emer­gency had gone in­to im­me­di­ate ef­fect here, as the Gov­ern­ment sought to ad­dress a sim­i­lar prob­lem—es­ca­lat­ing crim­i­nal vi­o­lence and the na­tion’s high­est mur­der rate of 623.

The Gov­ern­ment is aim­ing to tar­get vi­o­lent crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly il­le­gal firearms, am­mu­ni­tion and ex­plo­sives be­ing used by gang mem­bers.

It’s T&T’s sev­enth SoE.

The fifth lim­it­ed SoE was held un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2011. It led to the ar­rest and in­car­cer­a­tion of 7,000 in­di­vid­u­als.

In 2021, the sixth was de­clared dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Ja­maica—an­oth­er Cari­com mem­ber—has al­so de­clared nu­mer­ous SoEs un­der Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness’ ad­min­is­tra­tion to clamp down on the coun­try’s wor­ry­ing rate and gun vi­o­lence.

The last SoE was an­nounced in the parish of Claren­don in Au­gust, af­ter eight peo­ple were killed in gun at­tacks over a week­end—in­clud­ing a sev­en-year-old boy.

Some Ja­maicans ar­gued that the SoEs de­liv­ered mar­gin­al re­sults, say­ing crim­i­nals still had their guns and am­mu­ni­tion in­tact.

Sta­tis­tics pub­lished by the Ja­maica Con­stab­u­lary Force showed that the is­land had record­ed 1,138 mur­ders for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 1 to De­cem­ber 28, 2024. In 2022, Ja­maica’s mur­der rate was 1,421.

Be­lize, an­oth­er Cari­com na­tion, has had more than six SoEs since 2018.

For that year, the coun­try faced two SoEs fol­low­ing a spate of shoot­ing in­ci­dents and killings.The first SoE was in March and the next June 2024.

The re­main­ing 11 Cari­com coun­tries have de­clared SoEs over the years but were specif­i­cal­ly for nat­ur­al dis­as­ters such as floods, vol­ca­noes, earth­quakes and hur­ri­canes.