 Thank you ladies and gentlemen we are now ready to continue with the agenda for this morning and I now invite the Honourable Philip J. Pair, Prime Minister of St. Lucia and Karakam Lead Head with responsibility for sustainable development and Chair of the Council for National Security and Law Enforcement Consulate to deliver remarks. Ladies and gentlemen please welcome the Honourable Philip J. Pair, Prime Minister of St. Lucia. Thank you very much. Let me recognize the Prime Minister of Chile and Tobago, our host Prime Minister and other Prime Ministers and fellow heads of government. Ministers, Leader of the Opposition, Members of Parliament, Ladies and Gentlemen. Good morning. Good morning. I'm very pleased that soon after the 44th regular meeting of the Karakam Conference of Heads of Government held in the Bahamas in mid-February on the matter of crime as a public health concern, this special symposium has been convened to address that critical subject. I thank Prime Minister Rowley and the government and people of Trinidad and Tobago for their trademark Trinidad and Tobago hospitality which my delegation and I have received. We must admit that this conference is tiny and I'm pleased that the community has embraced this approach. I commend Prime Minister Rowley for reviving this initiative. In 2009, the Ambassadors and Kids and Neavies to Washington and the OAS Ambassador, C. Williams, whom I note is a presenter of one of our panels, delivered a comprehensive presentation to a caucus of Karakam Ministers of Health entitled Violence Prevention, a Karakam Public Health Imperative. He addressed the public health considerations of youth violence and the need to adopt an integrated, multisectual approach to this challenge with leadership from the health sector. Further, a 2017 IADB study on the crime and violence situation in the region also recommended that approach. The IADB report team stated the Karakam doesn't have a crime problem, it has a violence problem. While the study stated that gangs are greatly responsible for crime and violence in the Caribbean, it went on to see that violence is believed to begin in the home. The authors of the report were surprised by the magnitude of violence in the region and pointed out that this helped perpetuate the problem. The report asserted that Caribbean governments had not found the right balance between prevention and control of violence and urged them to replicate successful violence prevention programs from other countries. Our own recent experience in Zellusia also demands that we quickly explore new approaches to the problem of violence crime in our country. Our homicide rate jumped from a total of 13, 2016 to 16, 2017 to 74 in 2021, 76 in 2022 and to date 27 for 2023. The latest figure means that we are currently averaging two homicides per week. There must be a hold to this. The majority of these homicides have been farm related and have involved young people both as victims and perpetrators. The fact that the majority of these murders is concentrated in one area is no source of comfort. The rising crime rate is occurring in the context of various policies and laws that have been in place to combat violent crime. Our criminal code is bolstered by laws such as the anti-gang act which prohibits gangs and gang-raised activity and provides for aggravated circumstances justifying severe sentences in instances where a convicted person is a police officer or gang leader. The FIAMS act addresses the carried and use of FIAMS in ammunition as well as elicit manufacturing of and trafficking in FIAMS ammunition exposures and amendments to the act last year impose much stiffer penalties for its contraventions. Redundant legislation including the Money Launching Revention Act and the proceeds of crime for the disincentives crime by providing for the forfeiture of confiscation of the proceeds of specified crime. On March 26, 2023, we pass legislation to extend police powers by the suppression of escalated crime police powers act. Of course, we urge the police to observe the human rights of citizens and follow only legal methods. Mr. Chairman, colleagues, I believe it would be common knowledge to all of us in this room that in early March this year, Senoja requested the support of the RSS to quell an escalating crime situation in the southern part of the country. I want to take this opportunity to thank the RSS member states for quickly responding to our call for assistance. The scale and barbarity of the violence that occurred in that town over one weekend is unparalleled in our country's history. What is particularly concerning about the situation is that while the homosets were ganglated, the perpetrators were seemingly targeted family members of the perceived fools raising their criminality to a new and different level. The situation calls for more than a law enforcement response, but one that is comprehensive and multidimensional, that we seek to find and eradicate the roots of this cancerous violence. But as we all know, Mr. Chairman, violence, particularly organized gang violence, is a disease that is not easily arrested, especially in a reactionary mode and a scenario where it is aided and abetted by the infix of guns and ammunition from outside of the country, notably from the United States. We therefore welcome this symposium, as we in Senoja are in the early stages of implementing social and crime suppression programs that can provide an avenue for the resolution of that situation. My government is convinced that crime must be tackled scientifically and as a public health concern. While we continue to provide unprecedented resources to our police force, it has become clear that a proactive and evidence-based approach can bring about a sustainable abatement of crime and antisocial behavior in our country. There is also the crucial matter of diverting our young people away from crime, and my government has put in place a basket of initiatives to drive this. The first of these is the creation of a youth economy which aims at helping our young people to become entrepreneurs and business people. The vehicle for this transformation is an agile, specialized youth agency which will provide financial and technical assistance to our youth to convert their hobbies into entrepreneurship and skills into business. Related initiatives include the youth resilience, inclusion, and empowerment, Viari. Programs which will develop the learning output of solution youth, prepare them for professional job opportunities, connect them with professional development initiatives, and strengthen the solution community and family structures that impact youth development. The JEPSID project, Generation of Employment and Private Sector Development Program, is a PPP funded by the European Union to address youth unemployment by providing technical vocational education. There is also a program entitled Opportunities to Advance and Support Youth for Success, which will seek to improve the diversion of youth away from custodial sentences, support evidence-based diagnosis, and treatment and rehabilitation and diversion, and facilitate the reintegration of youth in the solution community after rehabilitation. Mr Chairman, I'm also hopeful that our symposium will produce a regional plan of action to tackle crime in a proactive and preventative measure. Public health and public security share similar policy objectives, as they both aim to provide the maximum benefit for the most people. In considering the application of the public health approach to crime and violence in our region, there are a number of observations and questions to which we hope the symposium can provide answers. At the regional level, I see priorities between the role played by CARFOR in a public health context and impacts. Therefore, I see a reformulated impact that will adapt CARFOR techniques to take the lead in the application of the regional public health approach to the prevention of crime and violence. A public health approach to public security will require huge investments in capacity building, both in terms of equipment and trading of frontline personnel. Ideally, we will need a comprehensive assessment of the trading needs for a whole of government and whole of society approach to crime prevention and control. We need a call of well-trained and resilient counselors and psychologists in our schools and communities who can handle the emotional stress of working at risk terrain and provide family therapy for young people at the risk of gang involvement and exploitation. The approach is what I mean, we'll create the understanding that on the line in economic, social and environmental drivers of crime and risk factors are applying targeted interventions to help divert individuals, families and communities at high risk away from violent crime. Mr Chairman, a focus on the family and the community is warranted because these are the incubators of good and bad behaviors and values. So the family, so goes the community and so we need clear and early warning indicators that the risk factors of serious violence that can enable the relevant agencies to act and then access the effectiveness and impact of the interventions. Over the past decades, we have seen a steady decline in the traditional structure and function of the average family in our region and this is not helped by a work system of shift where several parents have to be out of the house at hours when the children are in. The system that allowed parents to own their living while the children were carried for by immediate and extended family members is no more. There is no chance for positive values. A preventative approach would entail the deployment of multidisciplinary teams of family practitioners to give sustained moral emotional support to at-risk families. And while we are at Mr Chairman, we must take an urgent and hard look at our education system to ensure that it's not contributing to the situation rather than to the problem. I also see the benefits from applying the primary healthcare architecture in our countries to public scrutiny with community police stations adopting the preventative culture and approach of community health centers, contributing to research on standard public security data and feeding intelligence to a central point where it can be analyzed. And recommendations set up the chain of command for targeted interventions and antisocial behavior from hotspots. Of course Mr Chairman, this will have to be done securely and confidentially. While the different national circumstances would dictate how the public health approach will be implemented in each member state, the security of the additional financial early resources to sustain this work will have to be undertaken on a regional basis. One question that we have to ask ourselves Mr Chairman, is given the weaknesses in some of our public health systems can they realistically be incorporated into a public health approach in stopping violent crime? It is understood that both Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica have attended the public health approach models against violent crime. The Cure Violence Pilot Project was used in Trinidad from 2014-27. An evaluation by the Arizona State University found a 45 percent reduction in violent crime in the service area and this was regarded as providing strong evidence for expanding the method to effectively reduce homicides, wounded and shootings. In Jamaica, the Jamaica Injury Surveillance System used the approach for injury prevention. If these models did so promise as indicated by the evaluators, why have they not been applied in the region? And if so, why have these countries continued to experience significant rates of homicides? Why have been referring to gun-rated homicides in my remarks? Other aspects of violent crime in our region should also be considered. In fact, homicides is just a part of the ban of outcomes of violence. One of the most notable for us in Carycom is domestic abuse. It is well known that gender-based evidence, gender-based violence is a problem across the Caribbean. A recent survey of five Carycom member states revealed that 27 to 40 percent of women reported to have experienced violence from their partners and various national studies have shown that there are links between the development of violent tweets among youth and they're growing up in an environment of domestic abuse. In 2007, the UN and World Bank studied the entire crime, violence, and development policy options for the Caribbean, while only the evidence-based system of the public health approach pointed out one trouble. The one disadvantage of this approach is that in many of its most important interventions, such as programs to reduce unintended pregnancies and to promote early childhood development and parental training, many have payoffs in terms of reduced violence only sometime has only after sometime has passed end of quotes. This means therefore that we still have to grapple with strategies to reduce violent crime in the interim and consequently the criminal justice approach must be fortified although Caribbean governments are said to have an over reliance on it. It should also be pointed out that the same study declared that not all public health-inspired interventions have the late effects limiting the availability of alcohol and providing recreational and mentoring programs to remain in school, for example, may all produce relatively quick impacts. Mr Chairman, with the adoption of a public health approach to violent crime, what we will be embarking upon is a creation of a legacy of a Caribbean that is as much a safe and secure place for our children in the future as it was for us when we were children in the past. We have a responsibility to our people to provide them with the necessary resources so that they can become wealth creators and custodians of our patch money. I welcome this symposium and ask that we move swiftly to implement the recommendations which we put forward we can't afford otherwise. I thank you.