As Canada and Caribbean leaders end summit, Trudeau defends Haiti sanctions policy
Jacqueline Charles
Thu, October 19, 2023
Adrian Wyld/AP
Caribbean leaders and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrapped up a summit in Ottawa Thursday, saying they had found common ground in a number of areas, from security assistance for island-governments to support from Canada on global issues around climate change and financing, and attracting trade and investment.
“This was an outstanding opportunity to gather among friends and partners, to talk about the challenges that the world is facing, like climate change, like geopolitical instability, like the need for better flow of financing; to talk about the challenges the region is facing,” Trudeau said at a concluding press conference.
At their first-ever summit in Canada and with Trudeau, leaders of the 15-member Caribbean Community, known as CARICOM, spent two days discussing behind closed doors how to strengthen relations in order to create good jobs, make life more affordable, grow the middle class, fight climate change and keep people safe.
“We are holding the summit this week at a time of great turbulence,” Trudeau said. “The conflict in the Middle East is reverberating around the world; Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to rage on, conditions in Haiti remain heartbreaking, our citizens are living the devastating realities of climate crisis, whether that’s wild fires in Canada or hurricanes and rising sea levels across the Caribbean.”
As a result of these and other issues, Trudeau said, it’s important to strengthen the relationship with friends and like-minded partners, which Canada has done in launching its new strategic partnership with the Caribbean region.
“This is going to make our relationship stronger, and it’s going to help us work on our shared priorities,” Trudeau said.
During the summit Trudeau announced a new commitment with the Caribbean Development Bank of up to 58 million Canadian dollars to support renewable energy projects in the region and 6 million Canadian dollars through a Caribbean fund for renewable energy systems. He also announced that Canada would enhance coordination between the Canadian Armed Forces and the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency, known as CDEMA, to quickly react to natural disasters.
Canada also will expand a tariff program to give Caribbean countries duty-free access to the Canadian market.
“In many of our meetings we also talked about the issue of security in our region, especially in Haiti,” he said. “Since 2022, Canada has been committed to giving over 300 million [Canadian] dollars in international aid to address the Haitian crisis. We’ve also sanctioned 28 people and provided technical assistance to the Haitian police and will continue to be there to support the people of Haiti.”
Guyana President Irfaan Ali said leaders are pleased with the outcome of the summit, which focused on creating a framework to support investment and partnerships with the private sector and discussing policies that would support the aspirations of both Canada and CARICOM countries.
Also discussed, Ali said, said were food security, development financing, regional transport and logistics, energy security, and movement of people between Canada and CARICOM nations.
“This summit definitely built our trust, deepened out friendship and expanded out relationship,” he said.
While Canada and CARICOM countries have always enjoyed good relations, they started to develop even closer ties amid the ongoing crisis in Haiti as Trudeau pushed for more involvement by the region in helping the Caribbean nation address its political and security crisis. Trudeau was present on several calls with leaders before meeting with them face-to-face in February in The Bahamas where, despite U.S. pressure for Canada to lead an international intervention into Haiti, he announced instead more support for the Haitian police.
On Thursday, he continued to show his hesitancy over the idea of a mission to Haiti, despite a resolution earlier this month by the United Nations authorizing a deployment of a Multinational Security Support mission led by Kenya.
“Right now there is not even a consensus among the Haitian political class on whether or not someone should step in to stop people from being killed, murdered or raped in the streets of Port-au-Prince,” Trudeau said. “We have said the international community, including Canada and CARICOM, are there to help. But there has to be a willingness clearly expressed and articulated by the Haitian political class that this is the right thing.
“How they work out that consensus, how they establish it, will be very much something we are actively helping in and building that political consensus,” he added, referring to the CARICOM initiative involving three former prime ministers who have been trying to mediate a power-sharing agreement between Haiti Prime Minister Ariel Henry and members of the country’s political and civil society groups.
Trudeau said Canada is “working closely with CARICOM to ensure a process that would build the kind of political consensus necessary to go hand in hand with either intervention or support for the police or more humanitarian aid.”
So far, those efforts have not yielded any political agreement, with both sides blaming the other for the logjam.
Keith Rowley, the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, said there is a danger that “as we attempt to provide help for the Haitian people, that that help is not viewed as supporting a minority government arrangement.”
“There isn’t a single elected official in Haiti and as we look at the crisis and we advocate for an intervention of assistance, that that assistance be seen as coming from honest brokers and not in fact propping up what exists, in perpetuity,” Rowley said referring to Henry and his supporters. “That in itself poses a danger.”
Henry, who was tapped by President Jovenel Moise before his July 2021 assassination to serve as his seventh prime minister in four years, has said that he has no intentions of running in the next elections. Still, that has offered little comfort to his detractors who insist on a power-sharing agreement.
“We’ve got the U.N. resolution and we anticipate there will be some transitional arrangement to afford the intervention of the assistance that the people of Haiti so desperately need,” Rowley said.
This week’s summit was the first time since October that Canada did not announce new sanctions against Haitians, something Ottawa has done around every big event where Haiti was a focus. But during the press conference, Trudeau reiterated Canada’s 28 sanctions against Haitian individuals, several of whom are currently challenging the designation and have publicly questioned what evidence the country has of their alleged involvement with gangs.
Asked about how Canada has made its determination on who to blacklist, Trudeau defended the policy. Canada, he said, has been involved in Haiti for the last 30 years.
“Unfortunately, during these 30 years it has been impossible to solve the problem and the reality is, it’s not up to the international community to find a solution for Haiti,” Trudeau said. “Unfortunately, members of the elite in business, in government, in various wealthy families, oligarchs, for years, if not for decades, these people have been undermining the very stability of any progress, or any stability for the Haitian people.
“We won’t repeat the same mistakes,” he said. “Those who are responsible for this situation, for this present crisis, we have to put them in front of the international community to be accountable.”
This is why Canada has stepped up by blacklisting of those who it believes “are contributing to the current instability and horrific security situation that the Haitian people are suffering through right now,” he said.
“We have been putting pressure on the U.N., on the United States, on our European colleagues to meet us where we are with sanctions because we know that there are elites and oligarchs who are contributing to the instability and financing gangs and supporting this ongoing security and humanitarian crisis,” Trudeau said.
On Thursday, the U.N. Security Council, which so far has only sanctioned a powerful gang leader, unanimously approved a resolution renewing global sanctions on Haiti and continuing the work of a panel of experts charged with identifying targets for sanctions.
“This was an outstanding opportunity to gather among friends and partners, to talk about the challenges that the world is facing, like climate change, like geopolitical instability, like the need for better flow of financing; to talk about the challenges the region is facing,” Trudeau said at a concluding press conference.
At their first-ever summit in Canada and with Trudeau, leaders of the 15-member Caribbean Community, known as CARICOM, spent two days discussing behind closed doors how to strengthen relations in order to create good jobs, make life more affordable, grow the middle class, fight climate change and keep people safe.
“We are holding the summit this week at a time of great turbulence,” Trudeau said. “The conflict in the Middle East is reverberating around the world; Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to rage on, conditions in Haiti remain heartbreaking, our citizens are living the devastating realities of climate crisis, whether that’s wild fires in Canada or hurricanes and rising sea levels across the Caribbean.”
As a result of these and other issues, Trudeau said, it’s important to strengthen the relationship with friends and like-minded partners, which Canada has done in launching its new strategic partnership with the Caribbean region.
“This is going to make our relationship stronger, and it’s going to help us work on our shared priorities,” Trudeau said.
During the summit Trudeau announced a new commitment with the Caribbean Development Bank of up to 58 million Canadian dollars to support renewable energy projects in the region and 6 million Canadian dollars through a Caribbean fund for renewable energy systems. He also announced that Canada would enhance coordination between the Canadian Armed Forces and the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency, known as CDEMA, to quickly react to natural disasters.
Canada also will expand a tariff program to give Caribbean countries duty-free access to the Canadian market.
“In many of our meetings we also talked about the issue of security in our region, especially in Haiti,” he said. “Since 2022, Canada has been committed to giving over 300 million [Canadian] dollars in international aid to address the Haitian crisis. We’ve also sanctioned 28 people and provided technical assistance to the Haitian police and will continue to be there to support the people of Haiti.”
Guyana President Irfaan Ali said leaders are pleased with the outcome of the summit, which focused on creating a framework to support investment and partnerships with the private sector and discussing policies that would support the aspirations of both Canada and CARICOM countries.
Also discussed, Ali said, said were food security, development financing, regional transport and logistics, energy security, and movement of people between Canada and CARICOM nations.
“This summit definitely built our trust, deepened out friendship and expanded out relationship,” he said.
While Canada and CARICOM countries have always enjoyed good relations, they started to develop even closer ties amid the ongoing crisis in Haiti as Trudeau pushed for more involvement by the region in helping the Caribbean nation address its political and security crisis. Trudeau was present on several calls with leaders before meeting with them face-to-face in February in The Bahamas where, despite U.S. pressure for Canada to lead an international intervention into Haiti, he announced instead more support for the Haitian police.
On Thursday, he continued to show his hesitancy over the idea of a mission to Haiti, despite a resolution earlier this month by the United Nations authorizing a deployment of a Multinational Security Support mission led by Kenya.
“Right now there is not even a consensus among the Haitian political class on whether or not someone should step in to stop people from being killed, murdered or raped in the streets of Port-au-Prince,” Trudeau said. “We have said the international community, including Canada and CARICOM, are there to help. But there has to be a willingness clearly expressed and articulated by the Haitian political class that this is the right thing.
“How they work out that consensus, how they establish it, will be very much something we are actively helping in and building that political consensus,” he added, referring to the CARICOM initiative involving three former prime ministers who have been trying to mediate a power-sharing agreement between Haiti Prime Minister Ariel Henry and members of the country’s political and civil society groups.
Trudeau said Canada is “working closely with CARICOM to ensure a process that would build the kind of political consensus necessary to go hand in hand with either intervention or support for the police or more humanitarian aid.”
So far, those efforts have not yielded any political agreement, with both sides blaming the other for the logjam.
Keith Rowley, the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, said there is a danger that “as we attempt to provide help for the Haitian people, that that help is not viewed as supporting a minority government arrangement.”
“There isn’t a single elected official in Haiti and as we look at the crisis and we advocate for an intervention of assistance, that that assistance be seen as coming from honest brokers and not in fact propping up what exists, in perpetuity,” Rowley said referring to Henry and his supporters. “That in itself poses a danger.”
Henry, who was tapped by President Jovenel Moise before his July 2021 assassination to serve as his seventh prime minister in four years, has said that he has no intentions of running in the next elections. Still, that has offered little comfort to his detractors who insist on a power-sharing agreement.
“We’ve got the U.N. resolution and we anticipate there will be some transitional arrangement to afford the intervention of the assistance that the people of Haiti so desperately need,” Rowley said.
This week’s summit was the first time since October that Canada did not announce new sanctions against Haitians, something Ottawa has done around every big event where Haiti was a focus. But during the press conference, Trudeau reiterated Canada’s 28 sanctions against Haitian individuals, several of whom are currently challenging the designation and have publicly questioned what evidence the country has of their alleged involvement with gangs.
Asked about how Canada has made its determination on who to blacklist, Trudeau defended the policy. Canada, he said, has been involved in Haiti for the last 30 years.
“Unfortunately, during these 30 years it has been impossible to solve the problem and the reality is, it’s not up to the international community to find a solution for Haiti,” Trudeau said. “Unfortunately, members of the elite in business, in government, in various wealthy families, oligarchs, for years, if not for decades, these people have been undermining the very stability of any progress, or any stability for the Haitian people.
“We won’t repeat the same mistakes,” he said. “Those who are responsible for this situation, for this present crisis, we have to put them in front of the international community to be accountable.”
This is why Canada has stepped up by blacklisting of those who it believes “are contributing to the current instability and horrific security situation that the Haitian people are suffering through right now,” he said.
“We have been putting pressure on the U.N., on the United States, on our European colleagues to meet us where we are with sanctions because we know that there are elites and oligarchs who are contributing to the instability and financing gangs and supporting this ongoing security and humanitarian crisis,” Trudeau said.
On Thursday, the U.N. Security Council, which so far has only sanctioned a powerful gang leader, unanimously approved a resolution renewing global sanctions on Haiti and continuing the work of a panel of experts charged with identifying targets for sanctions.
Canada and Caribbean leaders talk Haiti, climate change in summit
Jacqueline Charles
Wed, October 18, 2023
Adrian Wyld/AP
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and leaders of the Caribbean Community kicked off a two-day summit in Ottawa on Wednesday, launching a first-ever strategic partnership that they hope will enhance their commercial relationship and provide the vulnerable small island states of the region with a strong ally as they tackle major global challenges.
“Today’s engagement provides another opportunity for dialogue on strategies to further strengthen our cooperation,” said Carla Barnett, the secretary general for the 15-member regional bloc known as CARICOM. “Persistent socioeconomic challenges continue to intersect with our common goals in foreign policy, trade, security and development. Effectively addressing these global challenges requires focused global efforts founded on global solidarity and driven by collective action.”
This is the first time the two are meeting in Canada for a summit. The gathering marked the second time in eight months that Trudeau and the Caribbean heads of government and state have met face to face. Their last meeting was in February in Nassau, Bahamas, where the crisis in Haiti was a major discussion point.
“Over the years Canada and the Caribbean Community have built an enduring partnership and friendship. We share strong ties between our peoples,” Trudeau said in his welcoming remarks. “As strategic partners, as friends, if we want to protect our people, if we want to deliver for our people we have to work together.”
READ MORE: Caribbean organizations want U.S. help on climate change
Among the issues on the agenda over the next two days: climate change and resilience, access to finance, reform of international finance, regional security, Immigration, trade and investment and the situation in Haiti.
“Mr. Prime Minister, more than ever before, Haiti needs us,” Dominica Prime Minister and CARICOM Chairman Roosevelt Skerrit told Trudeau.
Skerrit said hemispheric security and the multifaceted crisis in Haiti will feature prominently in their discussions. The bloc has been involved in trying to broker a political agreement between Haiti Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who is in attendance in Ottawa, and members of the country’s opposition and civil society. So far, they have not been able to come to an agreement..
In February, after it became clear that Canada would not be taking the lead on sending an international armed force into Haiti, CARICOM announced that it would focus its efforts on assisting the Haiti National Police rather than sending in troops.
Months later, after lobbying by both U.S. officials and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who attended CARICOM’s 50th anniversary celebration in Trinidad in July, the community reversed course. Caribbean leaders were among those who endorsed a resolution penned by the United States and Ecuador at the U.N. Security Council approving a Kenya-led deployment of forces into Haiti. Several Caribbean countries are among the nations that have volunteered to help field the operation.
“We are encouraged by the recent U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing a multinational security mission to help address Haiti’s security challenges and create conditions for long-term stability and personal preparedness,” Skerrit said, as he turned to Trudeau and added, “do what you must for the people of Haiti.”
Outside of the crisis in the community’s largest member state other pressing matters will be discussed, Skerrit and Barnett said. That includes the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the region’s tourist-dependent economies, the war in Ukraine, which is raising food prices, and the ongoing impact of climate change. Also of concern is the ongoing crisis in the Middle East following the Hamas attacks against Israel.
“CARICOM has joined the responsible members of the international community in calling for an end to the hostilities. It is our hope that all parties will work together for a lasting solution to the cycle of violence,” Skerrit said.
Trudeau acknowledged that their gathering was happening against a backdrop of “great turbulence following the terrorist attacks perpetrated by Hamas.”
“The conflict in the Middle East is reverberating around the world,” he said, adding that Canada is closely monitoring the situation.
“Recent years,” the Canadian prime minister later added, “have demonstrated how interconnected we all are. The pandemic was a health crisis. But it was also a crisis that affected supply chains and economies. The war of Russia and Ukraine has increased inflation and led to food insecurity. And this month, the terrorist states of Hamas have led to a lot of fear and uncertainty in communities across the globe.”
The group’s first closed-door session focused on Caribbean nations getting better access to finance and capital in the face of more extreme climate events threaten to wipe out their economies while plunging them deeper into debt.
Developing and middle-income countries need better access to finance, Trudeau said, especially in cases of catastrophe, health crises and to be able to maintain growth.
Canada, he said, supports efforts for reform of the international financial architecture, including using capital more efficiently, making low-interest financing available and “mobilizing private capital because we know public financing alone isn’t sufficient.”
“Canada has joined international partners in calling for major creditors, both public and private, to offer climate resilient debt clauses that pause debt repayments for vulnerable countries in times of crisis or catastrophe and Canada will now offer climate resilient debt clauses... in all new sovereign lending,” he said. “Governments absolutely must be able to support people in times of crisis and they must have the financing they need to build a better future.”
At the heart of the issue is that despite being considered middle-income countries on paper, Caribbean nations say they face huge challenges from both climate change and the refusal of development financial institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to give them access to low-cost money to respond to the crisis and to rebuild.
In an impassioned please, Barbados Prime Minister, among other things, called for an end to surcharges in an environment of high interests rates, telling the financial institutions: “We cannot ask people to pay interest rates when they’re supposed to be feeding people in the aftermath of a crisis.”
Mottley is currently leading a global discussion on the reform of the world’s multilateral finance institutions, which has been dubbed the “Bridgetown Initiative.”
“Our countries have become highly indebted, not because of corruption or profligacy, but because of the complexity of governance that we face, ranging from environmental threats to the consequences of a transition to a liberalized trading environment over the last 30 years that saw the diminution of our agricultural and manufacturing sectors when others could equally sustained there’s through mechanisms that were grandfathered,” Mottley said. “The victim hood of rules that are imposed on us are not of our own making, cannot continue.”
Frustrated by the lack of progress over financing and reforms to better assist Caribbean countries and other small island states, Mottley challenged her colleagues and Trudeau to not let the gathering become another one in which discussions do not amount to action.
“We come to these meetings and we are not getting the needle moving because of the absence of political will. Political will that is focused on domestic politics, political will that is focused on geopolitics,” she said.
Canada, she said she believes, has the power to help the region speak to “the remaining few countries who are blocking progress at the World Bank and at the IMF. And I also believe that we have to have the courage to say that the common framework for the treatment of debt is not working.”
“I really do believe that if ever there was a time for us to stop talking and [start] acting, it is now,” she said. “Giving us the oxygen without the capacity to execute will not get us to the finish line safely.”
Adrian Wyld/AP
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and leaders of the Caribbean Community kicked off a two-day summit in Ottawa on Wednesday, launching a first-ever strategic partnership that they hope will enhance their commercial relationship and provide the vulnerable small island states of the region with a strong ally as they tackle major global challenges.
“Today’s engagement provides another opportunity for dialogue on strategies to further strengthen our cooperation,” said Carla Barnett, the secretary general for the 15-member regional bloc known as CARICOM. “Persistent socioeconomic challenges continue to intersect with our common goals in foreign policy, trade, security and development. Effectively addressing these global challenges requires focused global efforts founded on global solidarity and driven by collective action.”
This is the first time the two are meeting in Canada for a summit. The gathering marked the second time in eight months that Trudeau and the Caribbean heads of government and state have met face to face. Their last meeting was in February in Nassau, Bahamas, where the crisis in Haiti was a major discussion point.
“Over the years Canada and the Caribbean Community have built an enduring partnership and friendship. We share strong ties between our peoples,” Trudeau said in his welcoming remarks. “As strategic partners, as friends, if we want to protect our people, if we want to deliver for our people we have to work together.”
READ MORE: Caribbean organizations want U.S. help on climate change
Among the issues on the agenda over the next two days: climate change and resilience, access to finance, reform of international finance, regional security, Immigration, trade and investment and the situation in Haiti.
“Mr. Prime Minister, more than ever before, Haiti needs us,” Dominica Prime Minister and CARICOM Chairman Roosevelt Skerrit told Trudeau.
Skerrit said hemispheric security and the multifaceted crisis in Haiti will feature prominently in their discussions. The bloc has been involved in trying to broker a political agreement between Haiti Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who is in attendance in Ottawa, and members of the country’s opposition and civil society. So far, they have not been able to come to an agreement..
In February, after it became clear that Canada would not be taking the lead on sending an international armed force into Haiti, CARICOM announced that it would focus its efforts on assisting the Haiti National Police rather than sending in troops.
Months later, after lobbying by both U.S. officials and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who attended CARICOM’s 50th anniversary celebration in Trinidad in July, the community reversed course. Caribbean leaders were among those who endorsed a resolution penned by the United States and Ecuador at the U.N. Security Council approving a Kenya-led deployment of forces into Haiti. Several Caribbean countries are among the nations that have volunteered to help field the operation.
“We are encouraged by the recent U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing a multinational security mission to help address Haiti’s security challenges and create conditions for long-term stability and personal preparedness,” Skerrit said, as he turned to Trudeau and added, “do what you must for the people of Haiti.”
Outside of the crisis in the community’s largest member state other pressing matters will be discussed, Skerrit and Barnett said. That includes the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the region’s tourist-dependent economies, the war in Ukraine, which is raising food prices, and the ongoing impact of climate change. Also of concern is the ongoing crisis in the Middle East following the Hamas attacks against Israel.
“CARICOM has joined the responsible members of the international community in calling for an end to the hostilities. It is our hope that all parties will work together for a lasting solution to the cycle of violence,” Skerrit said.
Trudeau acknowledged that their gathering was happening against a backdrop of “great turbulence following the terrorist attacks perpetrated by Hamas.”
“The conflict in the Middle East is reverberating around the world,” he said, adding that Canada is closely monitoring the situation.
“Recent years,” the Canadian prime minister later added, “have demonstrated how interconnected we all are. The pandemic was a health crisis. But it was also a crisis that affected supply chains and economies. The war of Russia and Ukraine has increased inflation and led to food insecurity. And this month, the terrorist states of Hamas have led to a lot of fear and uncertainty in communities across the globe.”
The group’s first closed-door session focused on Caribbean nations getting better access to finance and capital in the face of more extreme climate events threaten to wipe out their economies while plunging them deeper into debt.
Developing and middle-income countries need better access to finance, Trudeau said, especially in cases of catastrophe, health crises and to be able to maintain growth.
Canada, he said, supports efforts for reform of the international financial architecture, including using capital more efficiently, making low-interest financing available and “mobilizing private capital because we know public financing alone isn’t sufficient.”
“Canada has joined international partners in calling for major creditors, both public and private, to offer climate resilient debt clauses that pause debt repayments for vulnerable countries in times of crisis or catastrophe and Canada will now offer climate resilient debt clauses... in all new sovereign lending,” he said. “Governments absolutely must be able to support people in times of crisis and they must have the financing they need to build a better future.”
At the heart of the issue is that despite being considered middle-income countries on paper, Caribbean nations say they face huge challenges from both climate change and the refusal of development financial institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to give them access to low-cost money to respond to the crisis and to rebuild.
In an impassioned please, Barbados Prime Minister, among other things, called for an end to surcharges in an environment of high interests rates, telling the financial institutions: “We cannot ask people to pay interest rates when they’re supposed to be feeding people in the aftermath of a crisis.”
Mottley is currently leading a global discussion on the reform of the world’s multilateral finance institutions, which has been dubbed the “Bridgetown Initiative.”
“Our countries have become highly indebted, not because of corruption or profligacy, but because of the complexity of governance that we face, ranging from environmental threats to the consequences of a transition to a liberalized trading environment over the last 30 years that saw the diminution of our agricultural and manufacturing sectors when others could equally sustained there’s through mechanisms that were grandfathered,” Mottley said. “The victim hood of rules that are imposed on us are not of our own making, cannot continue.”
Frustrated by the lack of progress over financing and reforms to better assist Caribbean countries and other small island states, Mottley challenged her colleagues and Trudeau to not let the gathering become another one in which discussions do not amount to action.
“We come to these meetings and we are not getting the needle moving because of the absence of political will. Political will that is focused on domestic politics, political will that is focused on geopolitics,” she said.
Canada, she said she believes, has the power to help the region speak to “the remaining few countries who are blocking progress at the World Bank and at the IMF. And I also believe that we have to have the courage to say that the common framework for the treatment of debt is not working.”
“I really do believe that if ever there was a time for us to stop talking and [start] acting, it is now,” she said. “Giving us the oxygen without the capacity to execute will not get us to the finish line safely.”
Violent deaths in Caribbean have become public-health epidemic, leaders tell Canada
Jacqueline Charles
Wed, October 18, 2023
Pedro Portal/pportal@miamiherald.com
When police in Trinidad and Tobago discovered a huge cache of AK-47 rifles and other high-powered weapons in a small village last week, they thought that they had made a major breakthrough in their fight against illegal arms trafficking. Then early Wednesday morning, officers discovered a dozen more rifles.
“People are arming themselves to carry out their criminal business, largely the drug trade and of course the human trafficking trade,” the country’s prime minister, Keith Rowley, said Wednesday afternoon as he and other Caribbean leaders prepared to head into a closed-door discussion with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about the crime wave sweeping their tiny countries.
Violent crime is soaring in the Caribbean region, once the postcard of peace and tranquility, and the explosion of arms is undermining development efforts in the 15-member Caribbean Community regional bloc known as CARICOM, Rowley told Trudeau as they prepared to end the first day of a Canada-CARICOM Summit in Ottawa.
“It is so serious that we are regarding violent crime as a public health issue,” Rowley said. “There are very few diseases that kill more people in CARICOM than arms and ammunition.”
Rowley’s comments were striking because even among CARICOM leaders, most of their focus on the security crisis has focused on the situation in Haiti, their most populous and problematic member where violent armed groups are challenging the authority of a weak state on a daily basis.
“Haitians are dealing with a complex crisis,” Trudeau said before passing the microphone to Rowley. “Our role as a partner is to provide support that will actually have sustainable, durable impacts. “
Canada, he said, is committed to helping build “a more secure and prosperous atmosphere” and in that regard, announced additional funding for Haiti.
That assistance includes the launching of a multi-year training program for Haiti’s national police force to fight corruption and gangs. Canada also will allocate 3.4 million Canadian dollars to provide equipment and assistance to fight weapons-related violence and to help Haitians remain healthy by investing another 18.3 million Canadian dollars for vaccines, Trudeau said.
While Haiti’s security woes remain a focus of the group, Rowley’s explanation of the violent crime problem in the Caribbean showed that others are suffering some of the same issues as Haiti, just to a lesser degree.
Like Haiti, countries in the mostly English-speaking regional bloc are seeing an increase in gang activities and an explosion in illegal arms and ammunition, whose easy export out of U.S. ports has allowed gangs to arm themselves “more and more efficiently and effectively,” Rowley said.
According to the data, he noted, the CARICOM region is losing about 15 people a day to violent deaths.
“Nearly all of it is from the use of firearms,” the prime minister said. “And there’s a proliferation in recent times of assault weapons so the instance of shootings usually end up with multiple casualties, many deaths.”
In June, during a similar gathering between CARICOM heads with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris in The Bahamas, leaders voiced their concerns about the illegal export of weapons from the United States and asked the Biden administration to do more to crack down on weapons trafficking.
As part of a $100 million commitment, Harris said the U.S. planned to appoint an experienced prosecutor at the Department of Justice to oversee cases involving illegal weapons smuggling in the Caribbean, which now account for more than 50% of the weapons trafficking investigations by U.S. agencies.
The State Department, she also said, will support a recently established Crime Gun Intelligence Unit in Trinidad and Tobago to help train police officers, and bring criminals to justice by helping Caribbean islands solve gun-related cases. The U.S. also pledged to help improve forensic work in the region and develop a Haiti Transnational Criminal Investigative Unit to help police tackle firearms and ammunition smuggling, human trafficking and transnational gang activity.
“With the U.S. we tell them straight, you are producing these things and they are easy to get,” Rowley said. “In Canada’s case, I would say that we need the cooperation with Canada in the following ways... we need to be better able to patrol our coastal areas with small craft. We can’t get a proper supply of small craft to put into use immediately.
“The other thing is the effectiveness of the police,” he said. “One of the things that we have to admit is that the criminal elements engaged in this violence using their arms and ammunition, they have grown their ability faster than the police has been able to cope with it and therefore we need improved police training and more effective policing.”
Rowley also noted that the region is facing problems keeping up with the new surge in crime in both the area of cybersecurity and the legal system
“A significant amount of this crime and criminality is operated using cyberspace and this is another area we believe that in collaboration with Canada and your people, that our ability to cope can be improved,” he said. “The laws and regulations that we have in place now, which are operating in the courts, they don’t cater for the population that exists. They cater for a different breed of people where there was some moral compass, some underpinning good behavior, some expectation of integrity in the institutions.
“If we do not adjust our legal responses, the courts then become a mockery, laughed at by the criminals,” he said. “Because when you get before the courts, and the courts pretend to be this moral arbiter, the criminals become the victims and their concern become the primary concern, because you can’t do them this, and you can’t do them that, and they just carry on, on what is in effect an ongoing criminal enterprise.”
Jacqueline Charles
Wed, October 18, 2023
Pedro Portal/pportal@miamiherald.com
When police in Trinidad and Tobago discovered a huge cache of AK-47 rifles and other high-powered weapons in a small village last week, they thought that they had made a major breakthrough in their fight against illegal arms trafficking. Then early Wednesday morning, officers discovered a dozen more rifles.
“People are arming themselves to carry out their criminal business, largely the drug trade and of course the human trafficking trade,” the country’s prime minister, Keith Rowley, said Wednesday afternoon as he and other Caribbean leaders prepared to head into a closed-door discussion with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about the crime wave sweeping their tiny countries.
Violent crime is soaring in the Caribbean region, once the postcard of peace and tranquility, and the explosion of arms is undermining development efforts in the 15-member Caribbean Community regional bloc known as CARICOM, Rowley told Trudeau as they prepared to end the first day of a Canada-CARICOM Summit in Ottawa.
“It is so serious that we are regarding violent crime as a public health issue,” Rowley said. “There are very few diseases that kill more people in CARICOM than arms and ammunition.”
Rowley’s comments were striking because even among CARICOM leaders, most of their focus on the security crisis has focused on the situation in Haiti, their most populous and problematic member where violent armed groups are challenging the authority of a weak state on a daily basis.
“Haitians are dealing with a complex crisis,” Trudeau said before passing the microphone to Rowley. “Our role as a partner is to provide support that will actually have sustainable, durable impacts. “
Canada, he said, is committed to helping build “a more secure and prosperous atmosphere” and in that regard, announced additional funding for Haiti.
That assistance includes the launching of a multi-year training program for Haiti’s national police force to fight corruption and gangs. Canada also will allocate 3.4 million Canadian dollars to provide equipment and assistance to fight weapons-related violence and to help Haitians remain healthy by investing another 18.3 million Canadian dollars for vaccines, Trudeau said.
While Haiti’s security woes remain a focus of the group, Rowley’s explanation of the violent crime problem in the Caribbean showed that others are suffering some of the same issues as Haiti, just to a lesser degree.
Like Haiti, countries in the mostly English-speaking regional bloc are seeing an increase in gang activities and an explosion in illegal arms and ammunition, whose easy export out of U.S. ports has allowed gangs to arm themselves “more and more efficiently and effectively,” Rowley said.
According to the data, he noted, the CARICOM region is losing about 15 people a day to violent deaths.
“Nearly all of it is from the use of firearms,” the prime minister said. “And there’s a proliferation in recent times of assault weapons so the instance of shootings usually end up with multiple casualties, many deaths.”
In June, during a similar gathering between CARICOM heads with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris in The Bahamas, leaders voiced their concerns about the illegal export of weapons from the United States and asked the Biden administration to do more to crack down on weapons trafficking.
As part of a $100 million commitment, Harris said the U.S. planned to appoint an experienced prosecutor at the Department of Justice to oversee cases involving illegal weapons smuggling in the Caribbean, which now account for more than 50% of the weapons trafficking investigations by U.S. agencies.
The State Department, she also said, will support a recently established Crime Gun Intelligence Unit in Trinidad and Tobago to help train police officers, and bring criminals to justice by helping Caribbean islands solve gun-related cases. The U.S. also pledged to help improve forensic work in the region and develop a Haiti Transnational Criminal Investigative Unit to help police tackle firearms and ammunition smuggling, human trafficking and transnational gang activity.
“With the U.S. we tell them straight, you are producing these things and they are easy to get,” Rowley said. “In Canada’s case, I would say that we need the cooperation with Canada in the following ways... we need to be better able to patrol our coastal areas with small craft. We can’t get a proper supply of small craft to put into use immediately.
“The other thing is the effectiveness of the police,” he said. “One of the things that we have to admit is that the criminal elements engaged in this violence using their arms and ammunition, they have grown their ability faster than the police has been able to cope with it and therefore we need improved police training and more effective policing.”
Rowley also noted that the region is facing problems keeping up with the new surge in crime in both the area of cybersecurity and the legal system
“A significant amount of this crime and criminality is operated using cyberspace and this is another area we believe that in collaboration with Canada and your people, that our ability to cope can be improved,” he said. “The laws and regulations that we have in place now, which are operating in the courts, they don’t cater for the population that exists. They cater for a different breed of people where there was some moral compass, some underpinning good behavior, some expectation of integrity in the institutions.
“If we do not adjust our legal responses, the courts then become a mockery, laughed at by the criminals,” he said. “Because when you get before the courts, and the courts pretend to be this moral arbiter, the criminals become the victims and their concern become the primary concern, because you can’t do them this, and you can’t do them that, and they just carry on, on what is in effect an ongoing criminal enterprise.”
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