Chairman of the Caricom Council for National Security and Law Enforcement (CONSLE) Dr Errol Cort has called on the global community to come back to the negotiating table to conclude an Arms Trade Treaty.
Cort, who is Minister of National Security and Labour of Antigua and Barbuda expressed disappointment that a treaty was not concluded during the July 2012 United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty, as such an instrument is an important foreign policy and developmental objective not only of the Caribbean Community, but other disproportionately-affected small states as well, a Caricom Secretariat press release said.
Speaking at the Third Meeting of the Caribbean-United States Security Cooperation Dialogue in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago recently, Cort said Caricom had pledged to lobby for UN Member States to return to the negotiating table. “It is our hope that all countries concerned with the illegal trafficking of arms, including our CBSI partners, will re-join these negotiations set to recommence in 2013,” he was quoted as saying.
He noted that Caricom Heads had adopted a Declaration on Small Arms and Light Weapons in May 2011, which commits the region to implementing all necessary actions at the national and regional level to fully combat the illicit trade and to continue to accord the highest national and regional priority to this, the release said.
He pointed out that at the level of the United Nations, Caricom states have sought to work with the international community in adopting a robust treaty, which adequately addresses the issue, given the deleterious and disproportionate effects on the economies and security of our region.
According to the release, Cort said the proliferation of small arms and light weapons was linked to drug trafficking with statistics and headlines demonstrating that those were the weapons of choice in the perpetration of violent crime, including murder, armed robbery and burglary.
He cited the weapons issue and illicit drug trafficking as two predominant areas of concern to the region, and said that much of the Caribbean’s crime and security problems can be attributed to illicit drug trafficking which has become the platform facilitating and precipitating other transnational crime, including trafficking in persons. Despite the fact that efforts under the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative were starting to bear fruit, there remained significant work to be done in those areas, he said.
The release stated that Caricom Ministers of National Security, representatives of the other CBSI partners, the US and the Dominican Republic and observer countries and organisations under the CBSI also participated in the meeting.
