Suriname : The Organization of American States (OAS) and the government of Suriname on September 11, 2012 signed a Cooperation Agreement for the donation of a firearms marking machine to the Caribbean country, in order to improve its capabilities to combat the illicit trade in weapons.
St. Kitts-Nevis is among the 25 countries, to date, in the region that have signed a cooperation agreement with the OAS to participate in the program. The others are: Argentina, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Bahamas, Belize, Costa Rica, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Uruguay, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.
This initiative is part of the efforts outlined by OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza that define the organization as a strategic actor in the fight against crime.
Secretary General Insulza recalled that the agreement is signed within the framework of the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials (CIFTA), which “strengthens national capacities to mark firearms” that circulate without registration in the countries of the region. “With Suriname, we have 25 countries participating in this program, which is an important initiative for our organization,” he added.
The Secretary General added that Latin America and the Caribbean is “the region with the highest number of murders involving firearms in the world.” He noted that many of the illegal weapons in the Western Hemisphere are used by transnational crime organizations in drug trafficking, and that to fight crime effectively “it is essential to be able to mark and track firearms.”
For her part, the Ambassador of Suriname, Niermala Hindori-Badrising, said that the agreement serves “to meet the stipulations of the CIFTA agreement, but it is also a reflection of the progressive implementation of the mandates related to one of the major pillars of the OAS, namely Multidimensional Security.”
“The role of the OAS within this context clearly defines our regional body as a strategic partner for national governments,” said the Ambassador of Suriname, and added that it also signals the “commitment of my government to combat crime in general.”
Steven Costner, Deputy Director in the Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs of the State Department of the United States – which is funding the project- said that “the ability for us to cooperate in tracing weapons is one of the most important things we can do in combating illicit trafficking and fighting gun related crimes.”
“You can’t effectively trace, if you do not keep records, and you can not keep effective records without marking weapons, and we have numerous confirmations on guns being recovered and persons being arrested and prosecuted in various countries where we have cooperated in this effort,” added Costner.
In this sense, the OAS cooperates with the countries of the region with the objective that, in the shortest time possible, all the Member States will have established policies, as well as relevant legislation, to mark firearms at the time of manufacturing and/or import.
The ceremony was attended by the ambassadors of Canada, Allan Culham; of Nicaragua, Denis Moncada; and of Chile, Darío Paya; the OAS Secretary for Multidimensional Security, Adam Blackwell, and the Chief of Staff of the OAS Assistant Secretary General, Carmen Lucía de la Pava.
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