Editorial | Holding the US to account

Last week’s call by Caribbean leaders for the United States to “urgently adopt and take action to stop the illegal exportation of firearms and ammunition” into this region is likely to land in Washington like a gnat on an elephant’s back.

Even if the Biden administration notices, and is sympathetic to the request, the matter is unlikely to receive the administration’s concentrated attention. The White House will claim to be too distracted by “big” geopolitical events, and its domestic political calculus will probably say that this isn’t a matter on which a Democratic president seeking re-election should expend too much capital at this point in his presidency.

Which is not to suggest that the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) should lessen diplomatic efforts to get the Americans to listen, and indeed act, on what Caribbean leaders rightly declare to be a threat to the region’s democracy. If anything, they should become more aggressive in their diplomacy.

CARICOM, however, should bolster its diplomatic initiatives with legal action, beyond what some countries are doing – as urged by this newspaper – by joining Mexico in its court case against American gun manufacturers and marketers, for being blasé about to whom they sell their weapons, or under what circumstances they do so.

ATTEMPT TO GET RULING

Additionally, the member states of CARICOM, acting in concert, should attempt to get a ruling against the US at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for failing to fulfil its obligations under international treaty. The community should also press for a debate on the US’s approach to its obligation to hemispheric partners on small arms matters at the Organization of American States (OAS). CARICOM should use its numbers, with support from allies, to insist on a special OAS assembly to press their case.

These proposals are not intended to, and do not, imply that Caribbean states do not bear primary responsibility for dealing with the criminal violence that infects their societies, making the Caribbean among the most murderous regions in the world. Its homicide rate is over 30 per 100,000. In Jamaica that rate has hovered at around 50/100,000.

At their symposium in Trinidad and Tobago last week, CARICOM leaders did not shy away from their responsibility. Fittingly, they committed to tackling crime and violence as a regional public health epidemic, promising coordinated interventions from all sectors of society – from the legal and justice systems, to institutions of faith.

But rightly, they noted that the guns that fuel the region’s violence are not manufactured in the Caribbean. They are mostly illicit imports from the United States.

While making clear the region’s commitment to using its “human and financial and other resources” to eliminate “the scourge of illicit weapons”, the heads of government lamented the disproportionate share of national budgets that has to be spent on the problems that result from gun crime.

“We call on the United States of America to join the Caribbean in our War on Guns and urgently adopt and take action to stop the illegal exportation of firearms and ammunition into the Caribbean,” the leaders said in a special conference declaration.

This call ought to be seen, or treated as, an appeal to sentiment. The United States has a profound moral and legal obligation to be far more aggressive in seeking to halt the illegal export of guns to the Caribbean.

AMERICANS SHOULD RECIPROCATE

As Andrew Holness, the Jamaican prime minister, observed in Port of Spain, the Caribbean was a stalwart ally in America’s War on Drugs. The Americans should reciprocate. The Caribbean’s epidemic of gun violence is, in part, a price being paid for that alliance.

More critically, the United States is a signatory to the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, aimed at regulating the trade in arms – and not only battlefield weapons used by national armies. The treaty is concerned, too, with trade in small arms and ammunition.

Indeed, it specifically mentions the UN “Programme of Action to prevent, combat and eradicate the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons in all its aspects, as well as the Protocol against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms”.

The United States has claimed to be actively engaged in those UN small arms initiatives, although it is widely felt that its actions are constrained by domestic political concerns, especially the power of the gun lobby and ruling by the courts upholding the right of US citizens to bear arms. Even with that, America’s gun control and regulation are weaker than is possible, and its borders are porous to the illegal export of small arms, especially hand guns.

Against this backdrop, CARICOM’s members should ask the ICJ for a ruling that the United States has failed to fulfil its obligations as a signatory to the Arms Trade Treaty as well as its responsibilities under the Programme of Action and the protocol against trading in small arms.

If the region is uncertain of America’s strict legal liability in this matter, it might seek the ICJ’s intervention, on the basis ex aequo et bono ruling – of what is fair and right.

Further, the US is a signatory to the Inter-American Convention against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives. It should be asked to account at the OAS for its adherence to that convention.