Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

T&T will host a re­gion­al sym­po­sium on crime as a pub­lic health con­cern in April, Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne said yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, Browne said the de­ci­sion comes out of talks held dur­ing the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed 44th Con­fer­ence of the Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Cari­com in the Ba­hamas.

“The sup­port­ing en­ti­ties for this sym­po­sium would be the Coun­cil for Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Law En­force­ment (CON­SLE) re­gion­al body and an­oth­er one which is COHSOD, the Coun­cil for Hu­man and So­cial De­vel­op­ment,” Browne said.

He added that the Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sys­tem (RSS) and the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty (Cari­com IM­PACS) will pro­vide re­port­ing, sup­port and analy­sis for the sym­po­sium.

All heads of gov­ern­ment in the Caribbean re­gion were in­vit­ed to the spe­cial sym­po­sium.

Asked if the Unit­ed States will al­so be in­vit­ed, con­sid­er­ing that high-pow­ered weapons man­u­fac­tured on their soil are en­ter­ing re­gion­al coun­tries and get­ting in­to the hands of crim­i­nals, Browne said, “In terms of ex­ter­nal part­ners, the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca be­ing one po­ten­tial stake­hold­er, and there are many oth­ers in­clud­ing some from South Amer­i­ca, that de­ter­mi­na­tion has not yet been iden­ti­fied. But cer­tain­ly, the the­mat­ic area you’ve ref­er­enced, the flow of guns from North Amer­i­ca and else­where in­to the re­gion has been al­ready the sub­ject of de­tailed scruti­ny and that ex­am­i­na­tion will con­tin­ue.”

Browne said he an­tic­i­pates a “com­pre­hen­sive par­tic­i­pa­tion” in the sym­po­sium, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en that se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns were ex­pressed by many of the re­gion­al heads of gov­ern­ment dur­ing the re­cent con­fer­ence.

“A num­ber of heads of gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley, but cer­tain­ly not lim­it­ed to Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley, made ro­bust in­ter­ven­tions dur­ing cau­cus and dur­ing the ple­nary on this is­sue of crime, vi­o­lence and the treat­ment of vi­o­lence as a pub­lic health con­cern with­in the Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty,” he said.

“The ob­ser­va­tions were ubiq­ui­tous across the re­gion - the easy ac­cess to high-pow­ered weapons, the chal­lenges both at the lev­el of the ju­di­cia­ry, the lev­el of the po­lice ser­vice in many ju­ris­dic­tions to as­sist gov­ern­ments in com­ing to grip and bring­ing down the lev­el of vi­o­lent crime that we have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing.”

The Min­is­ter said he al­so an­tic­i­pates that the sym­po­sium will al­low the mo­bil­i­sa­tion of key stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the pri­vate sec­tor, “to par­tic­i­pate more ful­ly in the sup­pres­sion of this threat which we are see­ing with alarm­ing homi­cide rates.”