On 24 February 2022, the United Nations Regional Centre for Peace, Disarmament and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNLIREC) hosted the regional webinar on ‘Building a Crime Gun Preventive Strategy in the Caribbean’ with seven CARICOM States. The purpose of the webinar was to discuss eight critical components for implementing preventive crime gun strategies.
Building a preventive crime gun strategy aims at effectively identifying and apprehending shooters and interdicting illicit firearms and ammunition, ultimately reducing the levels of armed violence. The following eight critical components of a successful crime gun preventive strategy were presented: stakeholder buy-in, regional approaches, ballistic imaging, overlaying technologies, knowing offenders and how they interact, using a single intelligence unit, public buy-in and, in the future, expanding a preventative strategy. UNLIREC also highlighted that collaborative efforts between relevant stakeholders, in particular law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies, innovation and ballistic imaging are cornerstones to implementing an effective crime gun preventive strategy.
A total of 58 officials, including 15 women, from ministries of National Security, Police Forces, Defence Forces, and Forensic Laboratories States of the Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago participated in the regional webinar.
This regional webinar, carried out in line with the 2001 UN Porgramme of Action on Small Arms and Sustainable Development Goal 16.4, contributes towards the implementation of Goal 3, ‘Bolster law enforcement capacity to combat illicit firearms and ammunition trafficking and their illicit possession and misuse’ of the Caribbean Firearms Roadmap, to regional efforts prevent illicit trafficking of firearms and ammunition, and ultimately reducing firearms-related crimes and armed violence in the Caribbean.
This webinar was made possible thanks to the support of the Government of the United States of America. It forms part of a series of five regional webinars under the US-funded project to support the implementation of the Caribbean Firearms Roadmap.
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.