THE Governments of our Caribbean Community are expected to stand firmly behind Trinidad and Tobago’s bid to host the Secretariat for the United Nations designed ‘Small Arms Trade Treaty’.

Currently the headquarter secretariat for CARICOM’s Crime and Security arrangements, that country’s Prime Minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, has been consistent in her Government’s initiatives to ensure regional and international support for the Arms Trade Treaty Secretariat based in that twin-island State.

The latest offer to ensure success for this objective was the announcement made public by T&T’s Foreign Minister, Winston Dookeran, last week in New York, that T&T stand committed to providing rent-free furnished accommodation for fifteen years, plus payment of fifty (50) percent of the cost of utilities for five years.
Perhaps only Trinidad and Tobago, among all Caribbean Community states, plus some in Latin America, — if not beyond the rest of small, poor and developing states, could make such a generous offer at this time.
Apart from the important factor of geo-politics and issues related to the war against illegal arms and drugs trafficking, the offer by the Government in Port-of-Spain quite seems worthy of support by both the rich and powerful as well as small and vulnerable States.
As the Caribbean Community partner State that was the birth place of CARICOM, now in its 42nd year of operations, Trinidad and Tobago is, at this time, seems as an objective contender among small and developing states and ideally located between the two Americas’ as location for the UN Arms Trade Treaty Secretariat.
As recalled by Foreign Minister Dookeran who, incidentally, is bowing out of party politics and, by extension, would not be a candidate for his country’s coming September general elections in February this year, T&T had hosted the first ‘Preparatory Meeting’ for some 300 delegates from some 90 member countries of the UN participating states.
That venue and occasion had contributed significantly to his Government’s subsequent decision to request objective consideration as headquarter secretariat of the Small Arms Trade Treaty.
Dookeran, an academic by profession, contends that financial contributions for the Secretariat should not be “too onerous on account of financial difficulties many countries are currently facing”; and his country was, therefore, quite willing to “provide the enabling environment to reduce the financial burden of State parties to the Small Arms Treaty…”.