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Saturday, July 26, 2025

Caricom IMPACS warns of devastating impact of illegal guns in the Caribbean

by

GUARDIAN MEDIA NEWSROOM
31 days ago
20250625
Participants attending the five-day firearms training workshop being facilitated by the Trinidad-based Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS), which ends on Friday 27 June 2025. [Image courtesy CMC]

Participants attending the five-day firearms training workshop being facilitated by the Trinidad-based Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS), which ends on Friday 27 June 2025. [Image courtesy CMC]

CMC

The ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Trinidad-based Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty (IM­PACS), Lt. Col. Michael Jones, says the dev­as­tat­ing im­pact of il­le­gal guns in the Caribbean can­not be over­stat­ed.

“These in­stru­ments of vi­o­lence fu­el gang war­fare, dri­ve up homi­cide rates and un­der­mine the peace and sta­bil­i­ty es­sen­tial for our sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment,” he told a five-day firearms train­ing work­shop that ends on Fri­day.

This week’s train­ing work­shop is a di­rect out­come of the col­lab­o­ra­tive spir­it fos­tered by CARI­COM IM­PACS, the Eu­ro­pean Union’s (EU) Eu­rope-Latin Amer­i­ca Pro­gramme of As­sis­tance against Transna­tion­al Or­gan­ised Crime (El PAC­C­TO 2.0), and France’s Tech­ni­cal Co­op­er­a­tion Sup­port Pro­grame for the Fight against Or­ga­nized Crime in the Caribbean Re­gion (AL­COR­CA).

Jones said that the train­ing is a sig­nif­i­cant step in the col­lec­tive ef­forts to com­bat the scourge of il­le­gal firearms that threat­en Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean so­ci­eties.

He said that CARI­COM IM­PACS, in re­sponse to this per­va­sive threat, es­tab­lished the CARI­COM Crime Gun In­tel­li­gence Unit (CGIU), which was de­signed to be the nexus for in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions, analy­sis and in­for­ma­tion shar­ing across mem­ber states.

Jones not­ed that the suc­cess of the CGIU hinges on the ro­bust par­tic­i­pa­tion and ad­her­ence of CARI­COM Mem­ber States. He urged them to ob­serve the es­tab­lished pro­to­cols for in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing and in­ves­ti­ga­tion for the Re­gion’s se­cu­ri­ty ar­chi­tec­ture to func­tion op­ti­mal­ly.

EL PAC­C­TO 2.0 deputy di­rec­tor, Michel Se­gu­ra, said the train­ing is the first tri­par­tite col­lab­o­ra­tion among CARI­COM IM­PACS, EL PAC­C­TO 2.0 and AL­COR­CA geared to­wards fight­ing against transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime in the re­gion.

“This train­ing rep­re­sents more than a tech­ni­cal event. It is a com­mon vi­sion for a safer, more pre­pared, more con­nect­ed re­gion­al space to fight against firearms traf­fick­ing,” Se­gu­ra said.

“The re­sponse to this threat can on­ly be col­lec­tive, co-or­di­nat­ed and op­er­a­tional, based on in­ter­na­tion­al co-op­er­a­tion where it in­volves in­for­ma­tion ex­change be­tween ex­perts, pro­mo­tion of good op­er­a­tional prac­tices, build­ing com­mon re­sponse mech­a­nisms and cre­ation of trust­ed pro­fes­sion­al re­la­tion­ships,” he added.

EL PAC­C­TO 2.0 fo­cus­es on com­bat­ing transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime and dis­man­tling crim­i­nal mar­kets in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean. The pro­gramme, through its op­er­a­tional com­po­nent, ad­dress­es drug traf­fick­ing, arms traf­fick­ing, hu­man traf­fick­ing and oth­er crim­i­nal mar­kets.

CARI­COM IM­PACS said that through in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion, it strength­ens in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pac­i­ties and pro­motes the ex­change of in­for­ma­tion. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it fos­ters col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween se­cu­ri­ty forces and ju­di­cial au­thor­i­ties to en­hance ef­fec­tive­ness in tack­ling these threats.

AL­COR­CA’s in­ter­na­tion­al tech­ni­cal ex­pert on or­gan­ised crime and nar­co-traf­fick­ing, Mr. Fab­rice Cous­sot, said that the work­shop is the 50th such ac­tiv­i­ty since the AL­COR­CA pro­gramme was es­tab­lished nine years ago.

“More than ever, we are con­vinced that train­ing, shar­ing in­tel­li­gence and ex­per­tise are the on­ly way to tack­le the threats we face. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly true in the case of arms traf­fick­ing,” he said.

Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in T&T’s Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, Videsh Ma­haraj, said stud­ies have shown that re­gion­al­ly, the Caribbean suf­fers vi­o­lent death rates near­ly three times the glob­al av­er­age, with over 50 per cent of homi­cides in­volv­ing firearms.

He said that from 2009 to 2018, CARI­COM’s in­tel­li­gence re­ports show the seizure of over 22,000 il­lic­it firearms and more than 300,000 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion across the sub-re­gion. Maraj al­so not­ed that the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment trac­ing records re­veal that be­tween 2018 and 2022, the Bu­reau of Al­co­hol, To­bac­co, Firearms and Ex­plo­sives (ATF) traced 7,399 firearms re­cov­ered in the Caribbean, with 73 per cent iden­ti­fied as orig­i­nat­ing in the US.

Last year, the ATF traced over 616,000 firearms glob­al­ly, in­clud­ing those seized in Caribbean na­tions.

“Un­der­stand­ing these dy­nam­ics, Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mains com­mit­ted to form­ing stronger al­liances,” Ma­haraj said. “This in­cludes col­lab­o­ra­tion through CARI­COM IM­PACS, joint re­gion­al frame­works like the Caribbean Firearms Roadmap (which now counts 16 par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries), and tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance led by the Unit­ed Na­tions’ UN­LIREC, with back­ing from Cana­da, the Unit­ed King­dom, Ger­many, and the EU. —(CMC)


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