– President points to emergence of organised crime, violent ‘posses’ & gangs in the Caribbean

PRESIDENT David Granger has made an impassioned plea for greater security cooperation in the Caribbean.Delivering the feature address at a dinner hosted by the Institute of International Relations (IIR) of the University of the West Indies (UWI) to celebrate its 50th anniversary, on Friday at the St Augustine Campus of the UWI, the President made his impassioned plea.

He shared the position of Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Dr Keith Rowley, who, at the recent meeting of the Heads of Government of CARICOM, had pointed out the urgency of the security threats facing the region and the necessity for urgent action to be taken to improve security.

A release from the Ministry of the Presidency said the Guyanese Head of State, who is an alumnus of the IIR and a historian, recalled a variety of security crises: the secession of Anguilla in 1967; the armed insurrection in Grenada in 1979, and the invasion of that island four years later; the security crises in Haiti since 1994; and the challenges these have presented for regionalism.

President Granger observed that “old” threats, including invasion, insurrection, intervention, international and domestic terrorism, mutiny, maritime disputes, secession, territorial claims and coups d’état still persist, while new threats in the forms of transnational crimes of narcotics-trafficking, gun-running, money-laundering and illegal migration have emerged.

He noted that the region has also witnessed the emergence of organised crime and violent posses and gangs. According to the President, current arrangements for security cooperation in the Caribbean may be insufficient to meet the needs of member states, given the persistence of old security threats and the emergence of new ones.

As such, he called for these arrangements “to be evaluated and, if necessary, supplemented by additional systems and mechanisms in order to achieve the wider strategic objectives of the states.”

The Guyanese Head of State stressed that the security of the Caribbean will not improve on its own accord, and that a security system is needed to respond to the new security problems.

According to the release, President Granger told the large gathering that individual countries of the Caribbean Community cannot, on their own, overcome threats posed by territorial claims, transnational criminal networks, epidemics and environmental jeopardy.

He called for new security architecture to make the Caribbean safe, deter aggressors, combat illicit trafficking, and create a zone of peace in the Caribbean.

The President also urged for the Caribbean to be preserved as a zone of peace. “It must become a zone in which the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Caribbean states are respected, where the new security threats are extinguished, where our children can play in parks without fear of innocent victims of gangland violence, and where our young people are not seduced into drug trafficking and gun-running,” he said.