Trinidad and To­ba­go has been on the re­ceiv­ing end of the il­le­gal firearms trade for decades.

Due to its ge­o­graph­ic lo­ca­tion at the south­ern end of the Caribbean arch­i­pel­ago, just a few miles off the South­ern Amer­i­can coast, T&T has long served as a tran­ship­ment point, and in­creas­ing­ly in re­cent years, as a fi­nal des­ti­na­tion in the traf­fick­ing of drugs, guns and hu­mans.

Like many of our Cari­com neigh­bours to the north, in­clud­ing Ja­maica and Haiti, our streets are be­ing flood­ed with dead­ly weapons smug­gled from ex­tra-re­gion­al sources, with the Unit­ed States the main source of this il­le­gal sup­ply.

This has ag­gra­vat­ed al­ready se­ri­ous crime prob­lems and en­abled drug gangs to the de­gree that it threat­ens the sta­bil­i­ty of the en­tire re­gion.

Haiti, the poor­est coun­try in the re­gion, has been steadi­ly de­scend­ing in­to chaos and po­lit­i­cal tur­moil since the as­sas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Jovenel Moi­se in Ju­ly 2021. Over the past few months, an in­flux of so­phis­ti­cat­ed and high-cal­i­bre firearms and am­mu­ni­tion from the US has been di­rect­ly linked to the dra­mat­ic up­surge in crim­i­nal gang ac­tiv­i­ty there.

The US is al­so the main source of the weapons dri­ving the es­ca­la­tion in gang-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence across T&T.

Neigh­bour­ing is­lands pre­vi­ous­ly un­touched by the drugs and weapons scourge are now re­port­ing in­creased gun vi­o­lence.

In re­sponse to this un­prece­dent­ed wave of may­hem, the ef­forts of in­di­vid­ual law en­force­ment agen­cies have proven to be in­ad­e­quate.

The best ef­forts of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice to seize il­le­gal firearms have been of lit­tle or no ef­fect. A few dozen seizures bare­ly make a dent in the flood of il­le­gal weapons smug­gled through le­gal ports and var­i­ous points along the coun­try’s porous bor­ders.

A unit­ed re­gion­al ap­proach of­fers the best chance at erad­i­cat­ing this weapon scourge be­fore it gets worse.

While the US gov­ern­ment has in­di­cat­ed that dis­rupt­ing il­lic­it firearms traf­fick­ing in the Caribbean is “a shared pri­or­i­ty,” Cari­com needs to be seen and heard in this mat­ter, not sim­ply lob­by­ing for sup­port but al­so pool­ing re­sources and ex­per­tise in what is a mon­u­men­tal bat­tle against the traf­fick­ers.

Ef­forts un­der the aus­pices of the Caribbean Firearms Roadmap – de­vel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Cari­com Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty (Im­pacs) and the Unit­ed Na­tions Re­gion­al Cen­tre for Peace, Dis­ar­ma­ment and De­vel­op­ment in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean – should be ramped up in re­sponse to this wors­en­ing cri­sis.

Co­op­er­a­tion is vi­tal to suc­cess in this bat­tle, so Cari­com should give favourable con­sid­er­a­tion to the in­vi­ta­tion to join Mex­i­co in its le­gal fight to hold US gun man­u­fac­tur­ers and dis­trib­u­tors re­spon­si­ble for the vi­o­lence and blood­shed across the re­gion.

Ac­cord­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, T&T is ac­tive­ly con­sid­er­ing Mex­i­co’s re­quest “to test the le­gal­i­ty of those who make those weapons of war that are de­stroy­ing our so­ci­eties.”

Dr Row­ley is cor­rect in call­ing for Cari­com to speak with one voice to the US on this crit­i­cal mat­ter.

The US, which nev­er hes­i­tates to warn its cit­i­zens against vis­it­ing parts of this re­gion be­cause of the high lev­els of crime, must do much more to pre­vent guns from en­ter­ing the Caribbean.