Gail Alexan­der

Un­con­scionable acts of vi­o­lence in the re­gion against women and girls, il­lic­it traf­fick­ing of goods and peo­ple and an in­crease in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence have prompt­ed the need for the re­con­ven­ing of a spe­cial Cari­com sum­mit on se­cu­ri­ty.

Cari­com chair­man T&T Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in­di­cat­ed this at yes­ter­day's 32nd Cari­com In­ter­s­es­sion­al meet­ing.

Row­ley holds re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for se­cu­ri­ty in the CARI­COM Qua­si-Cab­i­net. He not­ed at the last In­ter­s­es­sion­al he had com­mit­ted to host­ing a high-lev­el sum­mit of mem­ber states and the re­gion­al mul­ti-sec­toral part­ners in T&T in April 2020. But this couldn't have been con­vened due to COVID 19 pan­dem­ic.

He added, "Al­though our at­ten­tion has been ap­pro­pri­ate­ly fo­cussed on se­cur­ing the health and so­cio-eco­nom­ic well­be­ing of our peo­ple and the (Cari­com) com­mu­ni­ty’s post COVID re­cov­ery, we must re­main com­mit­ted to ad­dress­ing crime and vi­o­lence as a pub­lic health is­sue in our re­gion. Across the globe we've seen how shut­downs have con­tributed to an in­crease in cas­es of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, in the re­gion, we con­tin­ue to wit­ness un­con­scionable acts of vi­o­lence against the women and chil­dren of our (Cari­com) com­mu­ni­ty."

"An­oth­er is­sue of great con­cern to our com­mu­ni­ty is the deep­en­ing sense of in­se­cu­ri­ty trig­gered by the scourge of il­lic­it traf­fick­ing in goods and per­sons in our re­gion. Such threats to law en­force­ment and se­cu­ri­ty, specif­i­cal­ly the il­lic­it traf­fick­ing in per­sons, have been par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­con­cert­ing as the com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ues its fight against the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic."

"These il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties and their vi­o­lent spill-over ef­fects fur­ther in­ten­si­fy cit­i­zen in­se­cu­ri­ty through­out our re­gion."

Row­ley said lead­ers have ac­knowl­edged that to ad­dress these chal­lenges, it is in­suf­fi­cient to re­ly on law en­force­ment alone and that a mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary ap­proach that en­gages var­i­ous sec­tors of Cari­com's com­mu­ni­ty must be adopt­ed.

"To this end, it is my hope that we can soon re­fo­cus our at­ten­tion and ef­forts to con­vene the Sum­mit with a dif­fer­ence, aim­ing to adopt a mul­ti-sec­toral re­sponse to treat with crime and vi­o­lence as a pub­lic health is­sue in our re­gion."

T&T chair­man for repa­ra­tion team

He al­so said the is­sue of repa­ra­tions for Na­tive Geno­cide and Slav­ery con­tin­ues to find a place on Cari­com's agen­da" and is gain­ing mo­men­tum".

"The CARI­COM Repa­ra­tions Com­mis­sion (CRC) has been at the fore­front of "The CARI­COM Repa­ra­tions Com­mis­sion (CRC) has been at the fore­front of this so­cial jus­tice move­ment and the Re­gion’s Ten-Point Ac­tion Plan, which links repara­to­ry jus­tice to eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment, has been a guid­ing light to many hu­man rights and so­cial jus­tice groups around the world."

"I take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to ap­plaud the CRC on its pi­o­neer­ing work. Many of us have recog­nised that the road to repara­to­ry jus­tice is like­ly to be long and ar­du­ous. How­ev­er, we must stay the course. To this end, T&T has recom­mit­ted it­self to as­sist the com­mu­ni­ty in this re­gard and as a first step has ap­point­ed Dr Heather Cateau, Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Hu­man­i­ties and Ed­u­ca­tion of The Uni­ver­si­ty of West In­dies, St. Au­gus­tine, as its new Chair­per­son to our re­con­sti­tut­ed Na­tion­al Com­mit­tee on Repa­ra­tions."