As part of total crime fight…
Alliance For Change (AFC) MP Sheila Holder believes that the time has come for the authorities to stop issuing gun licences to civilians; one sure way of reducing gun violence and putting a dent on the illegal arms trade.
The Member of Parliament said that too often criminals would wrest the guns from their victims during armed robberies and this was only equipping the gunmen with more arms. “The gunmen are using more sophisticated weapons so what is the point of issuing small arms to civilians… Civilians are not trained to protect themselves with guns,” Holder said.
The AFC MP who only recently returned from a workshop in Trinidad and Tobago which addressed the issue of small arms proliferation told Sunday Stabroek in an interview on Friday that despite the continued issuance of gun licences to civilians so they could protect themselves, crime continues to spiral out of control and citizens are no safer, with or without a gun.
“Clearly the policy has not worked and it is time we take steps to stop issuing guns to civilians,” Holder an educator-turned-politician said.
However, she believes that before such a policy is fully implemented there must be some real reforms within the security sector; corrupt policemen have to be weeded out from the security services, while at the same time the forces have to be better equipped to deal with the types of crimes being committed today. “It would be an exercise in futility to stop issuing guns to civilians when the security forces cannot protect citizens,” she said.
Holder told Sunday Stabroek that her views on the non-issuance of guns to civilians was even further strengthened at workshop where a Brazilian security expert revealed that in one state in the South American country such a policy was adopted and it saw a 46% reduction in gun crimes that year. “We have to learn from other people’s experiences and not be so naïve to think that we cannot do what others have done.”
The MP argued that there was no substitute for trained security agencies being entrusted with protecting citizens’ lives. “When the criminals go into the homes of civilians they ask for the weapons and get them too,” she observed. Noting that at the workshop it was agreed that civilians are not trained to protect themselves with guns, Holder pointed out that recent research has shown that a total of 500-875 million small arms were in circulation around the world, 74% of which was in the hands of civilians. “We see all of this yet there is massive violence and crimes and we cannot solve them,” Holder, who is also a social rights activist, said.
Amnesty
The AFC MP believes that in the absence of rigorous crackdown on the illicit gun trade here, the Bharrat Jagdeo administration should consider going the route of other countries and implementing gun buy-back or gun amnesty schemes. The Jagdeo government has so far resisted introducing any of the programmes here and the head of state had stated emphatically in the run-up to the 2006 General Elections that the programmes were not that successful in other countries and he did not think they would work here.
With the crime rate spiralling out of control in this country many persons have pointed to poor gun control policy as one of the main reasons for the violence. Guyana law enforcement officials are of the view that most of the illicit weapons on the streets are sourced from neighbouring Brazil, a large manufacturer of Taurus pistols. Guyana has no tough gun control policy, although government last year set up an inter-agency task force on illicit weapons trafficking. The administration also recently tightened legislation to make gun offences non-bailable, but with large uncontrolled borders and a lack of sound intelligence on gun smuggling the authorities had been unable to rein in the number of illegal weapons on the streets here. Holder said Guyana could overcome the problem of gun trafficking if urgent steps were taken to trace the manufacturing sources of both the weapons and the ammunition. She observed that most of the weapons in circulation had markings bearing the manufacturer’s name. She believes the government could lobby its international counterparts to help identify the manufacturers of the weapons frequently used in crimes here. “If the diplomatic community wants to help us then surely that is one way… because it has been found that some of the gun manufacturers are also involved in the sale of illicit guns,” Holder asserted.
Outcomes
Holder told the Sunday Stabroek that what emerged from the workshop, which was sponsored by the Women’s Institute for Alternative Development (WINAD), based in Trinidad and Tobago, and Project Ploughshares (PP) based in Canada, was that the proliferation of illegal small arms was threatening the ability of Caribbean states to meet their Millennium Development Goals. She said in its final report the workshop referred to a 2007 World Bank report which noted that murder rates in the Caribbean – at 30 per 100,000 population annually – were higher than any other region in the world. The World Bank also said that “high rates of crime and violence in the Caribbean are undermining growth, threatening human welfare, and impeding social development.”
According to her, the report noted that a major factor in the surge of gun-related criminality was the trafficking of narcotics, adding that illicit drugs were transshipped through the region from South America to North America and Europe. “There is a related movement of illegal weapons from North America to several destinations in the Caribbean. The rising crime rate has been accompanied by the increased use of more powerful weapons, resulting in higher mortality levels,” the workshop concluded. Additionally, it noted that the deadly impact of illicit firearms use in the Caribbean argues for a shared regional response. Security chiefs of the region recently agreed to the setting up of a regional response unit to tackle crime. The matter would be further discussed at the upcoming meeting of regional heads in Trinidad and Tobago next month. According to the final report of the workshop, a Caricom instrument on small arms could be a declaration, political agreement, or even a treaty, according to the perceived urgency and level of commitment of Caribbean states. The workshop concluded that given the central role now played by the UN Programme of Action (PoA) in the international response to small arms proliferation and misuse, implementation of the PoA should be central to any Caribbean instrument on small arms. A Caricom instrument also would need to set out commitments for small arms control that reflect the particular conditions, concerns and capacities of member states. These could include a coordinated agenda for action with civil society, including a research agenda, a working group on small arms issues, and the harmonization of relevant national legislation and action plans, the workshop final report stated.
Nepotism
Guyana was also represented at the workshop by Roxanne Myers a member of the Peace Builders Network in Guyana that has been active since 2005. In her submission, Myers told the workshop that in Guyana murder rates are increasing, pointing to the two recent slaughters which claimed the lives of 23 people. Myers said it was not known how the majority of arms were entering Guyana, but pointed out that the border with Brazil was not patrolled on the Guyana side. She said Guyana’s coast was effectively unpatrolled, noting that drug traffickers, smugglers, and gangs have left citizens feeling they need to buy guns to protect themselves in the absence of the state providing adequate security. She also noted that social factors in gun prevalence include: declining standards of education leading to high dropout rates; inadequate technical and vocational training opportunities; high levels of abuse in the home and sometimes in schools; high incidence of unemployment or underemployment; loss of the primary earner in the homes to immigration and AIDS. Myers observed that perpetrators of gun violence have better weapons than the police and other security forces and alleged that there was some nepotism in gun licence access. Further, Myers told the workshop that research was required with disaggregated data, asserting that more effective gun licensing was required as well as strategies to get the guns off the street. “Guyana’s national policy also must be in line with Caricom’s security framework, and coordinated with its neighbours,” Myers charged.
Holder said that the workshop, held from March 5 to 6 was aimed at reviewing the impact of, and responses to, small arms diffusion and violence in the Caribbean; hear from other affected regions (Horn of Africa and Mercosur) on their approaches to gun violence; explore a Caricom instrument to support implementation of the UN Programme of Action on small arms; and to develop a Caribbean research agenda on small arms violence.
By Nigel Williams
