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Leaders in the Caribbean have pledged to join forces to tackle crime and violence as they reaffirmed their support for Haiti, which the UN says continues to be ‘paralysed’ by gangs.
Taking the reins as chair of the Caribbean Community (Caricom), a bloc of 15 countries, Andrew Holness, Jamaica’s prime minister, said security in the region would be a “matter of great priority” under his chairmanship.
The prime minister raised concerns about the current pace of the international momentum to support Haiti, as he addressed the opening of this week’s Caricom leaders’ summit. He committed to prioritising support for the Caribbean nation, which is a member of Caricom.
Speaking to the Guardian at the conference, the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, said the challenge of crime and security “is one of the most significant existential threats facing the region”.
“It requires a collaborative approach among Caricom countries and we recognise that the criminals are getting far more sophisticated and when you look at the issue of transnational criminal activities it is important for us to conjoin our efforts,” he said.
Echoing his sentiments, Terrance Drew, the St Kitts and Nevis’ prime minister, said he welcomed a regional approach to the issue. “The region is dealing with the issue of security on multiple levels, Haiti being the area that is most affected. I think this would require, of course, the coordination of all of the member states of the Caricom … so I welcome the reiteration of us working together as a region,” he said.
Even as the conference was opening in Montego Bay, Jamaica, on Sunday, Haiti’s once-iconic Hotel Oloffson, a beloved Gothic gingerbread building in Port-au-Prince that inspired books, hosted parties and attracted visitors from Mick Jagger to Haitian presidents, was burned down by gangs.
According to the UN, since January, more than 4,000 people have been killed in Haiti, a 24% increase compared with the same period last year.
Speaking at a press conference at the meeting, member of Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council, Laurent Saint-Cyr, joined the calls for stronger regional assistance to curb the illicit arms trade and drug trafficking, which play a part in fueling Haiti’s crisis.
“Haiti, today, needs the region to speak with one voice in defense of security, peace and sustainable development,” he said, adding, “we are also counting on you to intensify advocacy with other regional and global partners for increased support towards more rigorous regional cooperation.”
Holness, who has proposed a regional justice and security framework, called for a strong and coordinated response to the escalating violence in the region, which he said had evolved far beyond traditional street-level crime, posing a threat to the region’s security.
“We must dismantle the influence of gangs in our communities, disrupt their finances … I am on record as saying that we need to launch a war on gangs of a similar magnitude and nature to the ‘war on terror’,” he said.
In the past, Caribbean leaders have jointly raised concerns about the alarming “epidemic of crime and violence in the Caribbean, fueled by illegal guns and organised criminal gangs”. In 2024, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica topped Statista’s homicide rates ranking for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Affirming her commitment to unity on regional justice and security, outgoing chair of Caricom, Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, in her speech at the conference pointed to the issue of gun trafficking from the US to the Caribbean: “Regrettably I’ve said over and over we pay a high price for the second amendment rights of the United States of America’s citizens,” she said.
In 2024, the New York attorney general, Letitia James, announced new measures and legislation to tackle gun trafficking from the US to the Caribbean. James quoted Jamaican government estimates that at least 200 guns are trafficked into the country from the US every month, and said that the weapons are fuelling violent crime and enabling networks that traffic drugs to the US.
But Jamaica has since seen a significant decline in murders. The country has accomplished a more than 40% reduction in murders in the first five months of the year, compared with the same period last year, the result, officials say, of a “sustained and strategic” multibillion-dollar investment in national security.
At the Caricom meeting, Holness showed Caribbean leaders some of the country’s crime-fighting tech and strategies, which officials said “demonstrate how Jamaica has integrated advanced technology into law enforcement operations, improving incident response, investigative processes and strategic deployment”.
In her opening speech at the conference, Mottley stressed the importance of regional approach to crime and security as she appealed for more countries to choose the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), whose new president, the Jamaican jurist Winston Anderson, was sworn in during the conference, as their final court of appeal.
The CCJ is now the final court of appeal for Barbados, Belize, Guyana, Dominica and St Lucia, but for some other Caribbean countries, which were former colonies, the London-based privy council is the final court of appeal.
Mottley urged Caribbean citizens to support the CCJ. “We are aware that there are some countries that have the requirement of referendum,” she said, pointing to the need for public education on the subject.
