(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) CARICOM Secretary-General, His Excellency Edwin W Carrington has urged security and law enforcement ministers, who are meeting in Suriname, to re-double their efforts in fulfilling their mandate, chief of which he said, was promoting the development of a common regional security strategy to complement the national security strategies of Members States.
Speaking Friday at the Opening Ceremony of the Eighth Meeting of the Council Responsible for Security and Law Enforcement (CONSLE), Mr Carrington acknowledged that while significant strides had been made in the development of a regional crime and security strategy, efforts must now be doubled to give effect to this strategy by implementing legislation and treaties to deal with border security, maritime regulations, and a justice protection system.
In addition, he told security ministers that they were also “obligated to establish strategic partnerships with Third States and regional and international agencies in the furtherance of regional security and the Community as a zone of peace with stable democracies.”
However, he hastened to point out that the Region had to take the lead in its own security agenda: “No matter how much assistance may be forthcoming from our external partners,” the Secretary-General stated, “the biblical injunction that God helps those who help themselves still stands true.”
In this regard, Mr Carrington urged Member States to take care of unfinished business on the security agenda, one of which was the legal arrangements to include security as the fourth pillar of the Community and in so doing establish the CONSLE as a Community Organ and the Trinidad and Tobago-based Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS), a CARICOM regional institution. Secretary-General Carrington urged the six Member States who had not yet signed the Protocol to amend the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, to do so with utmost urgency.
He commended the efforts of the CONSLE in forging tangible partnerships with third states and other international organizations and agencies, citing as a good example, the brokering of a recent CARICOM – UNODC Security Cooperation Programme which would ultimately support the efforts of Member States to respond to evolving human security threats and promote good governance.
So far, the partnership, he indicated, had produced a draft five-year “CARICOM Social and Development Crime Prevention Action Plan” which focussed on crime prevention, violence reduction, rehabilitation and protection of the environmental and economic resources of the Region.
The CARICOM Secretary-General was of the firm belief that the Region’s success in crime fighting lay in recognising the nexus between security and development as well as in partnerships and shared responsibility. “The key to our success in combating security challenges will be to reconcile the relationship between security and development, and to move forward with an integrated, multidimensional approach that emphasizes greater cooperation and partnership to confront common challenges,” CARICOM Secretary-General Carrington concluded.
