Crime and security in Caricom

At their annual meeting last weekend in the Bahamas, Heads of Government of Caricom indicated their increasing sensitivity to the rising levels of crime in virtually all member-states. They recognized, too, the increasing linkages between crime and the movement of narcotics throughout the Region and the consequent threats to both the internal and external security of their countries and thus to the Community as a whole.

At the instigation of the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, the Heads agreed to hold a meeting in Trinidad in April “to fully explore the crime and security issues facing the Region and to agree to a Strategy and action Plan to stem the rising tide of criminality”. And the Communique of the Conference indicated the Heads expectation of “a Draft Amendment to the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas to make Security the Fourth Pillar” of the regional integration system, following its review by the Council of Ministers responsible for National Security and Law Enforcement.

Citizens of the Community will certainly welcome the urgency now attached to the crime-drugs-security issue which has been plaguing our states. This will be so particularly in the light of the continuing intensity of crime in Jamaica, the dramatic increase in criminal activity, including kidnapping in Trinidad and Tobago, and the recent dramatic events here in Guyana involving the massacre of a number of citizens.

But it would be well to remind ourselves of the now long-standing concern of Caricom Heads about the crime-security issue, and their various previous expressed intentions to deal with it at the regional level. In that context, the citizenry of the Community would be well advised to make our voices heard now with some strength, in expressing our hope for not only appropriate decisions on what to do, but a determination by the Heads of Government that these decisions will be speedily implemented, in such a manner that they will be effective over the Region as a whole. We must insist on a regional approach with regional instruments to ensure effectiveness, and the necessary regional legal framework towards that end. And we must make our governments understand that we will not accept that because of their commitment to their own separate island and state “sovereignties”, half-way measures that do not permit speedy and well-equipped responses will be what we end up with, instead of measures based on a sufficient regional (and not simply national) complement of forces with the requisite regional authority.

In that connection it is useful to pay some attention to previous commitments made by our Heads on this matter. For as they proceed to Trinidad in April, it is well to remember that it was at the 11th meeting of their annual Conference, held in Jamaica in July/August 1990, that they “recognized that events such as the crisis in Trinidad and Tobago” – meaning the attempted Muslimeen coup d’etat – “highlighted the vulnerability of small states to threats from terrorism” and in that connection “agreed on the necessity to review existing arrangements in support of regional security and decided to establish a Committee of Member States to look into the matter and report before the 12th Meeting of Conference”.

This was a period of great sensitivity, and the decision itself reflected a certain hesitation to build on the existing nascent regional security arrangement, the OECS-Barbados Regional Security System(RSS), established in 1982, instead of reinventing the wheel all over again. But it can be surmised that the hesitation reflected a wariness of the RSS on the part of some member-states, because that instrument had been financially and organisationally supported by the major metropolitan countries, and had been used in the intervention in Grenada in 1983. We had become, presumably, super-sensitive about our sovereignty and wary of being ideologically tainted, or subject to external intrusions into our countries. But the RSS has survived and remains an effective, though small structure, devised as it was, not only to deal with “security” threats and narcotics, but with natural disasters as well.

At the succeeding 12th Meeting of the Heads in 1991, they “noted the progress made towards the establishment of a Caricom Security Regime and noted the urgency of its establishment”.

At the 13th Meeting in 1992, there was no mention made in the Heads’ Communique of the intended Caricom Security Regime, but an expression of their deep concern “that the Caribbean Region has become a significant transshipment point for illicit drugs” and that “a two-part Conference of Ministers and High Level officials be held in Port-of-Spain with a view to assessing and identifying the scope and nature of the problem and the existing proposed measures to combat it”.

There is no doubt that our governments have remained concerned with the security issue, particularly through machinery for consultations among police and defence force authorities. In addition, the necessity to prepare for and host World Cup Cricket certainly has led to an enhanced ability to cope with, in particular, the movement of individuals devoted to the perpetration of trans-border crime. There has been a renewed sensitivity to the narcotics issue, and the concept of terrorism, referred to at the 11th Heads Conference following the Muslimeen coup in Trinidad, has become an international buzz-word.

A certain shift of concern did take place at the end of the 1990’s when, in 1996, some countries, including Trinidad and Tobago and the OECS countries, signed, at the request of the United States of America, the so-called ShipRider Agreement. Jamaica and Barbados notably, hesitated to sign on the grounds of potential infringements of their sovereignty, but by the Heads meeting with President Clinton in Barbados in 1997, signed what were felt to be revised versions of the Agreement which took care of their reservations.

In between now and then, there has been substantial concern, first with the effects on the security of our states of the persistent deportation by the United States of Caribbean nationals involved in criminality in that country – originally without any notice to the Caribbean security authorities. This was a main complaint of Caribbean Heads at their meeting with President Bush last year. Secondly, the dramatic increase in internal violent crime, in some measure related to drug movements, has led some governments, including those of Jamaica, St Lucia and Antigua and Barbuda to import to function at high, and in some cases the highest, levels of their police forces, persons from the United Kingdom in particular. This is the context of the recent statement by Prime Minister Thompson of Barbados that foreign law enforcement agencies are “not needed to sustain” the local machinery.

Thirdly, we should note the statement by Prime Minister Manning in 2007 as well, that he had sought to interest the United States in participation in affairs relating to the security of the Caribbean states. This was perhaps, in part, a result of his concern for the security of the extensive investments in natural gas in that country, a substantial part destined for the United States and a potential threat to them in the “era of terrorism”.

Finally we have had the intense American concern with the porousness of the borders of both Guyana and Suriname, and their subjection to penetration of persons and networks involved in narcotics and the consequent activity of money-laundering. In which connection we can remind ourselves of the US threat to withdraw the visas of high officials of the Government of Guyana if the country refused to accept deportees; and President Jagdeo’s statement of some time ago that his hesitation to ratify the International Criminal Court agreement, which the US opposed, was not unrelated to the country’s need for American assistance to deal with the rising domestic crime and crime related to narcotics.

So we must read the current re-commitment of Heads of the Community to deal
collectively and institutionally with the crime menace, as a definitive recognition that the internal motivations and impulses for domestic crime are inextricably related to external interventions of foreign personnel and networks. They now seem to clearly recognise that the crime epidemic cannot be treated as a national issue with simply the national capabilities available; and that intense collective activity is not to be taken as something special and periodic, as for example in the World Cup Cricket case, but as a continuous regional activity and responsibility.

But surely today, collective activity must mean regionally organized and institutionalized activity, with appropriate regional systems for authorizing, implementing and monitoring such; and that means a certain harmonization of the political authorizing systems of the Region for speedy and effective action. So once again, the issue of regional governance comes on the agenda for our Heads. Let us see if they allow “sovereignty” to get in the way of doing what they have to do, seventeen years after their original decision in 1991.