Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Am­bas­sador Plenipo­ten­tiary to Cari­com Ralph Maraj has called for small, vul­ner­a­ble states in the Caribbean to re­assess their se­cu­ri­ty pos­ture in the face of ris­ing threats from both state and non-state ac­tors.

In a state­ment, Maraj chal­lenged the no­tion that the Caribbean is a “zone of peace”, point­ing to the per­va­sive in­flu­ence of transna­tion­al crim­i­nal car­tels en­gaged in nar­cotics, arms, and hu­man traf­fick­ing. Cit­ing com­ments by Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali, he not­ed that these or­gan­i­sa­tions have the pow­er to “over­whelm state in­sti­tu­tions, un­der­mine democ­ra­cy, per­vert the rule of law and threat­en hu­man dig­ni­ty and de­vel­op­ment”.

He said, “The big ques­tion is, what should small, vul­ner­a­ble states like Trinidad and To­ba­go do to pro­tect them­selves in a world of in­creas­ing volatil­i­ty where mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism is be­ing chal­lenged?”