23-24 June 2022, the UNODC Firearms Trafficking Section organised in close cooperation with CARICOM IMPACS a virtual regional meeting to present to Caribbean countries the Investigative and Prosecutorial Guidelines for Firearms Trafficking and Related Crimes that the Section is about to publish.
The meeting brought together more than 40 criminal justice practitioners from the Caribbean region, who went through the Guidelines and engaged in a constructive discussion to on its content and provided final inputs based on their experiences, which will be taken into consideration for the completion of the guidelines.
The Guidelines address challenges and procedural obstacles for criminal justice practitioners to effectively investigate and prosecute firearms trafficking cases and related offences. They also include investigative techniques and approaches, methods for gathering evidence, prosecution techniques and approaches to evidence presentation, to the defence, and post-conviction considerations. The guidelines have been developed by UNODC, incorporating the inputs and experiences of more than 50 experts across the world shared during 3 expert group meetings, which provides a practical perspective when addressing the investigation and prosecution of firearms trafficking and related offences. Caribbean experiences and practices had also been taken into account during the process of developing the guidelines, as two experts from Jamaica and Curacao actively participated in the expert group meetings.
As a way forward, during a last session, participants expressed their interest in using these guidelines to include in the training curriculum of their criminal justice practitioners, and emphasised that they will be a useful basis to establish standard procedures in the national frameworks of their own countries, by adapting them to their own systems. Once the guidelines are published, they will be disseminated among the Caribbean countries.
The meeting also provided the room for the practitioners to exchange ideas and experiences, which helped to increase their cooperation at operational level in the region in the efforts for disrupting and reducing illicit flows of firearms and ammunition.
These Guidelines will also contribute to the implementation of the Caribbean Firearms Roadmap, by promoting more effective channels of cooperation in criminal matters, among law enforcement and judicial levels to counter firearms trafficking cases, both at national and international levels.
The virtual meeting was part of UNODC Firearms Trafficking Section’s project to ‘Support to the implementation of the crime prevention and criminal justice component of the Caribbean Firearms Roadmap, financed by Germany.
