The Honorable Minister of Home Affairs, Mr. Robeson Benn, and Ms. Jasmin Louisy, Research Officer attended the 3rd Annual Meeting of the Caribbean Firearms Roadmap for focal points and Ministers of National Security which was held from November 14–15, 2023, in Saint Lucia, where Officials from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) the Dominican Republic and the United States of America gathered.

For the first time since the adoption of the Caribbean Firearms Roadmap in 2020, states met in person with international partners and donors to discuss the Roadmap’s implementation and renew their commitment to combating illicit trafficking of firearms and ammunition.

The meeting was organized by the United Nations Regional Centre for Peace, Disarmament, and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNLIREC) and the CARICOM Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS) in collaboration with the government of Saint Lucia.

The meeting, which was funded by Canada, envisaged a one-day (November 14) working-level exchange between national focal points established under the Caribbean Firearms Roadmap as well as a high-level meeting of Ministers yesterday (November 15).

Discussions were centered around reinforcing the regulatory frameworks governing firearms and ammunition, reducing the illicit flow of firearms and ammunition into, within, and beyond the region, bolstering law enforcement capacity to combat illicit firearms and ammunition trafficking and their illicit possession and misuse and systematically decreasing the risk of diversion of firearms and ammunition from the government- and non-government-owned arsenals.

The meeting also produced a joint statement on the occasion of the 3rd Meeting of States on the Caribbean Firearms Roadmap where the Honorable Minister made an intervention to include “identifying the critical interlinkages of drug trafficking, money laundering, human trafficking and firearms sourcing and use and other forms of transnational organized crime(s).”