This coun­try’s crime-fight­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ty and an­ti-hu­man traf­fick­ing mea­sures are be­ing fur­ther en­hanced fol­low­ing the of­fi­cial launch of the sec­ond phase of the CariSE­CURE pro­gramme—Strength­en­ing Ev­i­dence-Based De­ci­sion Mak­ing for Cit­i­zen Se­cu­ri­ty in the Caribbean—by the US Em­bassy and the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, un­der the aus­pices of the Unit­ed States Agency for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment East­ern and South­ern Caribbean (US­AID/ESC).

CariSE­CURE 2.0 was launched on Oc­to­ber 11 and will be im­ple­ment­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme on be­half of the US Em­bassy.

De­signed to im­prove how gov­ern­ment and non-gov­ern­ment part­ners col­lect, an­a­lyze, man­age, and use crime and vi­o­lence da­ta to im­prove pol­i­cy-mak­ing and cit­i­zen se­cu­ri­ty pro­grammes, CariSE­CURE 2.0 is a re­gion­al US$13 mil­lion pro­gramme across six Caribbean coun­tries, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment, “In Trinidad and To­ba­go, CariSE­CURE 2.0 will fo­cus on ad­dress­ing traf­fick­ing in per­sons (TIP), more com­mon­ly known as hu­man traf­fick­ing. In co­or­di­na­tion with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, the pro­gramme will sup­port the Gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse to TIP and ad­dress­ing its ad­verse im­pact on young peo­ple.”

The US Em­bassy’s state­ment added, “CariSE­CURE 2.0 will bol­ster ca­pac­i­ty with­in the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to iden­ti­fy, screen, in­ves­ti­gate, and ef­fec­tive­ly pros­e­cute cas­es. The pro­gramme will al­so build ca­pac­i­ty re­gard­ing the avail­abil­i­ty and use of stan­dard­ized, time­ly, dis­ag­gre­gat­ed, and re­li­able TIP da­ta.”

It al­so said, “By strength­en­ing both the da­ta and process­es to pros­e­cute hu­man traf­fick­ing cas­es, the CariSE­CURE 2.0 pro­gramme’s as­sis­tance will help re­duce the in­ci­dence of traf­fick­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Speak­ing at the for­mal launch, US Em­bassy Chargé d’Af­faires Shante Moore said, “This pro­gramme mat­ters. Our oblig­a­tion as de­mo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ments, both in the Unit­ed States and Trinidad and To­ba­go, is to work in part­ner­ship with our fel­low cit­i­zens to tack­le the biggest prob­lems they face, in­clud­ing crime, youth vi­o­lence, and hu­man traf­fick­ing.”

And Act­ing Re­gion­al Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of US­AID/ESC, David Billings, agreed say­ing, “We sim­ply must en­sure that those who have of­fend­ed are pros­e­cut­ed to the fullest ex­tent of the law, and those who have been hurt, re­ceive care and as­sis­tance so they can heal and en­vi­sion a brighter fu­ture.”