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Workshop on the Convention on the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism and the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material in Barbados

Bridgetown, February 28, 2020. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) delivered a workshop for selected CARICOM states (Caribbean Community) on the universalization and effective implementation of the Convention on the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism (ICSANT), the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM) and its 2005 Amendment (ACPPNM).

This event, held February 25-27, was co-hosted by the Government of Barbados and was organized with funding from the Government of Canada.

The opening ceremony was attended by Jerome Walcott, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade of Barbados; Maria Legault, High Commissioner of Canada; Didier Trebucq, United Nations Resident Coordinator, and high-ranking officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency and CARICOM. 

The event brought together senior officials from CARICOM member states, a region where adherence to these instruments remains low.

This training emphasized the importance and benefits of implementing these legal instruments. Nuclear and radioactive terrorism are transnational threats, therefore it is very important that the entire region shares the same picture of the situation and the threats, that they have the availability of instruments to decrease the risk and increase the prosecutions.

With the same intention, after years of being a "blind gender", the international community has realized the importance of women, both in maintaining the law in society and in diminishing the risk of terrorism.

In practice, there are five ways in which gender has been associated with terrorism and violent extremism, and their response:

1) Women as victims

2) Gender equality as an anti-terrorist tactic

3) Women as perpetrators

4) Women as peacemakers

5) Women as victims of security policies and practices

Anais Rios of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime for Central America and the Caribbean in Panama (UNODC ROPAN) delivered  remarks on these linkages and on the strategy for gender equality and the empowerment of women (2018-2021) and UNODC initiatives to incorporate gender perspectives into criminal justice responses to terrorism.