Violence prevention in the Caribbean

Caribbean nations are smack in the middle of the drug trade routes from South America to North America and Europe. It did not take long for local societies to suffer the impact of the illegal drug trade and the illegal trafficking in guns that follows on its heels. It did not take long either, for civil society to react.

“Alongside AIDS, road traffic accidents and substance abuse, injury from violence is a leading cause of death for 15 to 25-year-olds in the English-speaking Caribbean," according to the Wellcome Trust.

Jamaica, with one of the highest homicide rates in the world, is concerned with gang violence and is home to a successful experience in community policing. The Grants Pen community of close to 7000 people in St Andrews, Kingston, is one special case. It saw its homicide rate fall from 11 in 2004 to 3, below the national murder rate, since the multifaceted police station opened in May 2005, relying on strong community participation.

Folade Mutota, from the Women’s Institute for Alternative Development, WINAD in Trinidad and Tobago, and Jonelle Leitch from the Volunteer Youth Corps in Guyana, are part of an effort to create a Caribbean wide coalition of civil society organizations for the prevention of crime and violence and building peaceful societies.

The issue of empowering civil society is especially critical in Haiti, a nation that has been described by Massimo Toschi, head of Child Protection of the MINUSTAH stabilization mission as "hostage to armed violence". Bertrand Njanja Fassu, head of Unicef Child Protection in Haiti spoke about children affected by armed violence in Haiti and their most pressing needs.

From Comunidad Segura:

Dossier COAV Children in Organized Armed Violence

Publications:

Neither War nor Peace: International comparisons on child and youth involvement in armed violence, Chapter on Jamaica..

Haiti's children can´t wait

When Children are caught in the middle

Caribbean civil society launches coalition against crime

"A year of Peace", the Jamaican community policing example