Trinidad and To­ba­go has made his­to­ry as the first Caribbean na­tion to launch a Na­tion­al Ac­tion Plan (NAP) on Women, Peace, and Se­cu­ri­ty (WPS), with a fo­cus on tack­ling gun and gang-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence.

Ac­cord­ing to the Gen­der and Child Af­fairs de­part­ment in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, “Trinidad and To­ba­go ex­pe­ri­ences vi­o­lent crime, par­tic­u­lar­ly homi­cides, dri­ven by gun-re­lat­ed and gang-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence. This af­fects all as­pects of dai­ly life, in­clud­ing so­cial sta­bil­i­ty, which dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly im­pacts vul­ner­a­ble groups, in­clud­ing women and youth.”

It went fur­ther in say­ing de­spite their re­silience and lead­er­ship in com­mu­ni­ties, women have been large­ly ex­clud­ed from de­ci­sion-mak­ing process­es re­lat­ed to crime pre­ven­tion and se­cu­ri­ty.

The WPS Agen­da seeks to en­sure that their per­spec­tives, skills, and ex­pe­ri­ences are ful­ly in­te­grat­ed in­to peace­build­ing strate­gies—ev­i­dence shows that in­clud­ing women leads to more ef­fec­tive and sus­tain­able peace.

The WPS NAP (2025–2030) was launched on Wednes­day at a high-lev­el event host­ed by the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter – Gen­der and Child Af­fairs (OPM-GCA), in part­ner­ship with UN Women and the Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da. The Plan pro­vides a strate­gic frame­work to ad­dress the im­pact of armed vi­o­lence, or­gan­ised crime, and Gen­der-based Vi­o­lence, recog­nis­ing that peace and se­cu­ri­ty strate­gies must re­flect the lived re­al­i­ties of all cit­i­zens.

The launch fol­lows two years of ex­ten­sive ground­work led by UN Women, Our Se­cure Fu­ture, the Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da, the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter – Gen­der and Child Af­fairs, Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, the WPS Mul­ti-stake­hold­er Ad­vi­so­ry Group; with crit­i­cal in­puts from civ­il so­ci­ety.