Gail Alexan­der

The death of T&T schol­ar­ship win­ner Ravin­dra Ram­rat­tan dur­ing the re­cent ter­ror­ist at­tack at a mall in Kenya was an­oth­er ex­am­ple of the con­se­quences of the il­lic­it arms flow across bor­ders, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar told the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly yes­ter­day.Per­sad-Bisses­sar spoke about Ram­rat­tan's death as she urged world lead­ers to rat­i­fy the UN's small arms treaty dur­ing her ad­dress to lead­ers at the 68th ses­sion of the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in New York.

Ram­rat­tan, a Pres­i­dent's Medal win­ner, had been work­ing for the World Bank in Nairo­bi since 2011. He was among an es­ti­mat­ed 72 peo­ple killed when mem­bers of the So­ma­lia-based al Qae­da af­fil­i­ate Al Shabaab group stormed the West­gate Mall in Nairo­bi. Some 175 peo­ple were al­so wound­ed dur­ing the at­tack. Vic­tims al­so hailed from the UK, France, In­dia, Ghana, Aus­tralia, Chi­na, Pe­ru and New Zealand.

Yes­ter­day, a spokesman from the PM's of­fice said Ram­rat­tan's body was sched­uled to be brought back to T&T to­mor­row via a Caribbean Air­lines flight from Lon­don, af­ter it is air­lift­ed there from Nairo­bi.Per­sad-Bisses­sar, al­so Cari­com chair­man, in a wide-rang­ing ad­dress to UN mem­bers yes­ter­day, said Cari­com mem­bers were sup­port­ers of the Arms Trade Treaty, agreed to in March, which they had al­ready signed and rat­i­fied.

She said: "In the light of our ex­pe­ri­ences and chal­lenges with the im­pact of crime, vi­o­lence and the il­lic­it trade in small arms and light weapons, on our de­vel­op­ment ef­forts; we would en­cour­age all States which have not as yet done so, to sign and rat­i­fy the ATT so that it may come in­to force at the ear­li­est op­por­tu­ni­ty."

She added, "In fact, one of our bril­liant young cit­i­zens, Mr Ravin­dra Ram­rat­tan, a for­mer Pres­i­dent's Gold Medal­ist for aca­d­e­m­ic ex­cel­lence, was killed last Sat­ur­day in the ter­ror­ist at­tack on West­gate mall in Nairo­bi. He no doubt fell vic­tim to il­le­gal

guns and oth­er weapons in the hands of mur­der­ous ter­ror­ists.

"His death is mere­ly one more ex­am­ple of the con­se­quences of the il­lic­it cross bor­der flows of small arms and light weapons which, in the Cari­com con­text, and in­deed in many re­gions of the world, are our weapons of mass de­struc­tion."Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so un­der­scored the Caribbean's grave con­cern with the es­ca­lat­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis in Syr­ia. She re­it­er­at­ed re­gion­al calls for the sit­u­a­tion to be re­solved through di­a­logue, and not through the use of any mea­sures which would vi­o­late in­ter­na­tion­al law.

"T&T al­so sub­mits if there is pri­ma fa­cie ev­i­dence that in­di­vid­u­als com­mit­ted war crimes with­in the ju­ris­dic­tion of the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court (ICC), dur­ing this pro­tract­ed con­flict, steps should be tak­en to bring those in­di­vid­u­als to jus­tice."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, how­ev­er, ex­pressed con­cern about the Mil­le­ni­um De­vel­op­ment Goals pro­gramme which UN lead­ers launched in 2000, which was aimed at achiev­ing tar­gets on mat­ters from pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion to en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty. She said progress had been un­even."I am proud to re­port T&T has made tremen­dous strides in achiev­ing the goals, and in some cas­es has sur­passed them. Nev­er­the­less, a num­ber of coun­tries are not on track to re­alise any of the tar­gets," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

Say­ing cur­rent ap­proach­es would not ad­vance that agen­da by 2015, the PM said trans­for­ma­tive change at the na­tion­al, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al lev­els was re­quired. She said high lev­el meet­ings on the sit­u­a­tion must "un­der­score that we must go be­yond busi­ness as usu­al."The PM high­light­ed Cari­com's con­cern about small high­ly in­debt­ed mid­dle in­come coun­tries.

Cari­com states, she said, were now ap­peal­ing to the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to sup­port the call for the im­me­di­ate re­view of the nar­row cri­te­ria used by mul­ti­lat­er­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and an ear­ly re­view of the eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion of grad­u­at­ed small high­ly in­debt­ed mid­dle-in­come coun­tries.She al­so re­it­er­at­ed Cari­com's call for the US em­bar­go against Cu­ba to be lift­ed "soon­er rather than lat­er."