A just-ended regional meeting in Saint Lucia has called on countries that manufacture and export firearms to establish more effective controls to combat illicit gun and ammunition trafficking targeting Caribbean countries.
The call came in a joint statement after the 3rd Annual Meeting of States on the Caribbean Firearms Roadmap.
The statement noted the impact of the illicit gun and ammunition trade on the Caribbean’s social, economic, and health systems and the Region’s peace and sustainable development.
Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Heads of Government meeting in April this year acknowledged that firearms contribute significantly to crime and violence in regional states.
At that meeting, the leaders declared ‘War on Guns’.
They also lamented the disproportionate share of their national budgets that went into measures to address crime, violence, and national security.
The Saint Lucia Firearms Roadmap meeting statement noted the critical interlinkages between drug trafficking, money laundering, human trafficking, illegal firearms sourcing and use, and other forms of transnational organised crime.
The document also reaffirmed the participants’ unwavering commitment to urgently addressing the illegal gun and ammunition trafficking issue.
In addition, the attendees remained firmly committed to implementing commitments in the Caribbean Firearms Roadmap by 2030.
The commitments specifically included the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 16.4, which aims to reduce illicit arms flows by 2030.
From 14 to 15 November 2023, CARICOM and Dominican Republic officials met in Saint Lucia for the 3rd Annual Meeting of States of the Caribbean Firearms Roadmap.
In 2020, all fifteen CARICOM States and the Dominican Republic adopted the Roadmap.
It identified priority actions to address the proliferation of illicit firearms and Ammunition across the Caribbean.
We can file this one under CARICOM: The Great Pretender; as in pretending, to Caribbean electorates, that the fools they selected to represent their interests, can have the slightest influence on the warmongers of the US empire.
The US empire became the most prominent world power ever, by being the most ruthless & skillful at perpetrating VIOLENCE against peoples of the world, whose historical territories contained natural resources desperately needed to build up the empire economically. Ask the natives of the North, Central & South America for their first-hand experience of US barbarism & blood-lust!
At this late stage of capitalism, the only tangible industry left for the failing empire is to export arms & war. This creates the necessary chaos in the world, by which the US empire hopes to stall the inevitable rise of BRICS nations who offer peaceful, cooperative progress for the world in the 21st century. This is in stark relief to the predatory, zero-sum relationship imposed on the world in the 20th century, by the US, after the world was left devastated by World War II, and after the ominous US threat of nuclear annihilation, as displayed against the innocent citizens of Hiroshima & Nagasaki.
This milquetoast charade by CARICOM is the limit of what will be allowed by the US empire, whose circle of vassal & debtor countries is fast diminishing, now that the BRICS nations have exposed the long hidden fact that the emperor has no clothes!
Somebody,anybody please make it make sense…The US takes every extreme measure to seize and confiscate tonnes upon tonnes of cocaine and weed in our region which doesn’t kill ppl instantly but pays a blind eye to all those mass destruction guns and ammunition that comes through our territory from their territory that kills ppl instantly….i cudn say it better than Michael Jackson …..”all I wanna say is they don’t really care about us”
Please somebody or anybody tell me or show me or even direct me to any link or advertisements where a gun mfg or gun mfgs advertise guns for sale to st lucians giving them 40 or 50% off to st lucians whether at home or abroad ??? I would love to get that link if anyone can provide me that link please so that nonsense and its nothing but nonsense the authorities coming up with is nonsence completely nonsense
I think st lucia have all the tools needed to solve the problem but refuse to use those tools at their disposal shifting the blame to somewhere else
Every gun or weapon in st lucia has a story behind it because st lucia doesn’t manufacture firearm’s of any kind so if you find a gun in st lucia someone is responsible for getting this weapon there since I live where most of the guns are manufactured and ship to st lucia why not go after those shipping the weapons because to ship anything internationally from united states you must provide identifications and on top of that more than 90% of those weapons ship out of the us are ship by st lucian nationals living up there so you see its easier to blame gun manufacturers than to go after those shipping the weapons there so until the day when st lucia decides to use the tools they already have in their tool box nothing will change
Those meetings are just talk shops where no one is willing to take responsibility for incompetence. They are all eyeing the guy (manufacturers) with the the deep pockets. Those manufacturers are not sending weapons to St. Lucia. It is St. Lucians who are involved in the gun trade to St. Lucia.
The problem with those regional idiots is that they are just inept. They have few solutions to a fixable problem. First, the security minister is invariably a person who is not trained in things that are security. Sometimes, the minister is someone shoved into the ministry in order to give them “something.” Right before our eyes we see there is hardly deterrence (a) gunslingers receiving bail (b) there has been no extradition for people shipping guns from overseas (c) short prison sentences for people found with guilty illegal weapons. The list goes on.
How are the weapons manufacturers to be blamed for our own stupidity?