Envoy blasts cut-backs of anti-crime foreign aid
ANTIGUA and Barbuda’s High Commissioner to Britain, Sir Ronald Sanders, has criticised recent cut-backs in international financial and technical support for the Caribbean in its fight against drug traffickers and illegal firearm dealers.
He also warned that the region was vulnerable to threats posed by a network of criminals to democratic governance in the Caribbean Community states.
“There is now some evidence of a network of criminals throughout the Caribbean who were known to each other in Canada and the United States of America.” Through this network, he said, “a criminal could be imported from one Caribbean country to carry out a criminal activity in another where he has no police record or profile…”.
Sir Ronald was addressing a recent “Conference on Crime in the Caribbean Basin — Policy Options on Transnational Crime” in Ottawa, Canada.
The conference was hosted by the Canadian Foundation for the Americas, an independent non-government organisation “dedicated to deepening and strengthening Canada’s relations with countries in Latin America and the Caribbean through policy analysis and discussion”.
In his presentation, Sir Ronald, who is also deputy chair of the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF), referred to a recently submitted report of the Caribbean Community Task Force on Crime and Security that states:
“The seemingly uncontrollable rise in armed crime and violence as evidenced by the unusually high murder rates in some countries (eg Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana)”, said the task force, “has not only threatened legitimate governments, but has become a very serious threat to the basic fabric of our societies…”
Sanders cited the high rates of murder last year in Caribbean Community states like Jamaica (1,040); Trinidad and Tobago (171) and Guyana (152) and argued that the upsurge in crime in the region, linked to drug trafficking and firearms trafficking, has been facilitated by the economic downturn in Caribbean countries.
This resulted from a combination of factors including, he said, loss of markets for their primary products, a reduction in economic aid, decline in foreign investment, decline also in tourism and a hostile onslaught on their financial services sector.
In his focus on “policy options”, the Antigua and Barbuda diplomat told the participants that Caribbean countries have been comparatively “successful” in the areas of curbing money laundering and countering terrorism financing.
But the sticking problem remains in the area of drug trafficking which, he said, has become the pillar of transnational criminal activity in the Caribbean, resulting in an exponential increase in corruption and violent crime.
Given its geographical location in this hemisphere between supplier and market nations of illegal drugs (primarily cocaine and marijuana), the Caribbean remains, “a significant corridor for illicit drugs”, said Sir Ronald.
Yet, as he told participants, “we are witnessing now a marked withdrawal of resources from the Caribbean by the international community to address this problem at a time when the range of criminal activity that it spawns is threatening the economic, social and political stability of the Caribbean region”.
The types of crimes now prevalent in the region, he pointed out, directly affect good governance through “the corruption of law enforcement agencies. They also threaten governance itself through violent crimes such as murder, including killings of police, witnesses and competitors”.
Sir Ronald went on to give examples of the reduction of assistance by the international community to the Caribbean’s anti-crime fight and the decline in aid to support the region’s drug law enforcement. These, he said, included:
* the closure of the European Commission’s Drug Control Office that operated in the region from 1999 to 2001;
* replacement of a Caribbean-based police adviser with one based in London;
* significant scaling down of the United Nations Caribbean Office on Drugs and Crime; and
* the recall of the United States Drugs Control co-ordinator and the termination of a Regional Maritime Co-operation Project that was designed to curb narco-trafficking by maritime means.
He also referred to a case of when the Guyana Government sought help from the USA to deal with kidnappings and related serious crimes, it was directed to a private agency, “whose bill would have to be met by a country considered to be among the poorest of the region…..”
In this “extremely troubling situation”, noted the Caribbean envoy, “the international community has been less than forthcoming in supporting the efforts of Caribbean governments to tackle the problems”.
For this reason, he noted, Caribbean Community heads of government decided at their latest meeting last month in Port-of-Spain to seek, as soon as possible, a “high-level meeting” between Caricom and the international community to review drug control policies with this region.
Sir Ronald also urged participants at the Ottawa Conference on “Crime in the Caribbean Basin” to do all they can to support the Caribbean’s efforts for the proposed “high-level meeting” to address what he described as “the pandemic of drug trafficking through the region”.
The Caribbean, he said, has “shown itself willing”. The international community, especially its closest neighbours (to the North) “should do no less”.