Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs, Wil­fred Nicholas Mor­ris, has called for stronger in­ter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion to com­bat nar­co-traf­fick­ing and transna­tion­al crime, warn­ing that these threats have un­der­mined peace and se­cu­ri­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Speak­ing at the IV CELAC-EU Sum­mit in San­ta Mar­ta, Colom­bia, Mor­ris said the coun­try no longer ex­ists in a “zone of peace” due to the se­ri­ous im­pact of drug and hu­man traf­fick­ing across the re­gion. He told del­e­gates that while Trinidad and To­ba­go val­ues peace as a “supreme as­set,” its re­al­i­ty over the past two decades has been shaped by or­gan­ised crime and its so­cial and eco­nom­ic con­se­quences.

Mor­ris al­so called for re­form of the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial sys­tem, ar­gu­ing that cur­rent rules dis­ad­van­tage vul­ner­a­ble na­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS), which face the com­bined pres­sures of cli­mate change, eco­nom­ic in­sta­bil­i­ty, and lim­it­ed ac­cess to fi­nance. These dis­par­i­ties, he said, “must be ur­gent­ly ad­dressed” to en­sure greater fair­ness and in­clu­sion for de­vel­op­ing na­tions.

He al­so ex­pressed sol­i­dar­i­ty with CARI­COM mem­ber states af­fect­ed by Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa, in­clud­ing Ja­maica and Haiti, as well as with Cu­ba.

The sum­mit was at­tend­ed by heads of state and gov­ern­ment from Latin Amer­i­ca, the Caribbean, and the Eu­ro­pean Union, in­clud­ing the pres­i­dents of Colom­bia, Brazil, and the Eu­ro­pean Coun­cil, and the prime min­is­ters of Bel­gium, the Nether­lands, and St Kitts and Nevis.