In 1999, ca­lyp­son­ian Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters saw some­thing slip­ping away from T&T.

He put pen to pa­per for a stir­ring com­po­si­tion called Soul of the Na­tion, as he re­flect­ed on the dis­in­te­gra­tion of what was then a proud im­age of a re­pub­lic of hap­py is­land-dwelling peo­ple.

In his ca­lyp­so, Pe­ters asked sev­er­al per­ti­nent ques­tions, in­clud­ing, “How could some­place so good turn out so bad, where is the love in this land that we once had?”

The re­frain al­so made a poignant de­c­la­ra­tion, “Some­body tief­ing the soul ah mih na­tion, some­body gone with the love that we had.”

It’s been 25 years since then, but the true sig­nif­i­cance of those lyrics hit home to us yes­ter­day morn­ing, as the coun­try was awok­en by news of the bru­tal be­head­ing of four-year-old Ama­rah Lal­lite.

Even though as a na­tion we have be­come some­what ac­cus­tomed to sense­less and hor­rif­ic mur­ders of late, the way that young Ama­rah’s life was tak­en was still a huge­ly sick­en­ing shock.

Ama­rah was sim­ply an in­no­cent child, who, from po­lice ac­counts, was caught in the mid­dle of a quar­rel be­tween two adults.

One can hard­ly imag­ine what it was like for her in the last mo­ments of her ten­der life, fac­ing a heart­less adult with a blade against her throat, snuff­ing her life out in the most grue­some of ways and for some­thing she did not do, much less un­der­stand.

This bru­tal killing tore at the very heart­strings of our na­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly com­ing as it did in be­tween two of the holi­est com­mem­o­ra­tions of East­er and Eid-ul-Fitr, where lessons of love, com­pas­sion and car­ing are para­mount.

The re­cent emer­gence of videos por­tray­ing vi­o­lence against chil­dren in T&T has al­ready height­ened our state of con­scious­ness and el­e­vat­ed our con­cerns about the lack of ro­bust child wel­fare pro­tec­tion sys­tems backed by strong com­mu­ni­ty sup­port.

Ama­rah’s death fur­ther em­pha­sis­es the need for us to build and re­store so­cial co­he­sion with­in com­mu­ni­ties for speed­i­er in­ter­ven­tions that can re­solve con­flicts be­fore they es­ca­late in­to sense­less killings.

The adage it takes a vil­lage to raise a child speaks to the im­por­tance of an all-of-so­ci­ety ap­proach to the care, guid­ance, and pro­tec­tion of our chil­dren.

This re­quires ac­tive and con­sis­tent work from the for­mal so­cial de­vel­op­ment arms of the State, and the pil­lars of com­mu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing re­li­gious bod­ies, sport­ing groups, com­mu­ni­ty coun­cils, ed­u­ca­tion fa­cil­i­ties and, of course, the fam­i­ly.

It is with­in these units that the soul of com­mu­ni­ties re­sides and from where the re­vival of our na­tion’s soul must be­gin, through de­lib­er­ate ac­tion to take back con­trol of our so­ci­ety and our pre­ferred peace­ful way of life.