From 10 – 13 July, the United Nations Regional Centre for Peace, Disarmament and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNLIREC), together with ARQUEBUS Solutions Ltd, delivered Double Cast training to five participants from Guyana in Georgetown.
The participants, among them firearm examiners from the Guyana Police Force and Scientific Officers from the Guyana Forensic Science Laboratory, participated in the 4-day Training, based on INTERPOL’s Double Casting methodology.
Double casting increases the ability of national authorities to make connections between crime and crime scenes, nationally, regionally and internationally. The training sought to build capacity in the region to create microscopic replicas of projectiles and cartridge cases that can be peer reviewed and uploaded to a Ballistics Identification Network or shared across jurisdictions for comparison without disturbing the chain of custody of the original evidence.
Equipment used in the training as well as consumables to conduct further, practical double casting of projectiles were handed over to the Government of Guyana.
Double Cast Training is part of UNLIREC’s Caribbean Operational Forensic Ballistics Assistance Package, which is made possible thanks to the support of the US Department of State and the Government of Canada. This training was the sixth and final double cast training delivered by UNLIREC. Four similar activities were delivered to national authorities in Bahamas, Barbados, Belize and Trinidad and Tobago as well as a sub-regional workshop to participants from Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines.
UNLIREC, as the regional organ of the UN Office for Disarmament, seeks to advance the cause of practical disarmament in Latin America and the Caribbean as part of its commitment to support Member States in their implementation of international disarmament and non-proliferation instruments, in particular, the 2001 UN Programme of Action on Small Arms.