Against a backdrop of rising transnational digital threats, Belize and Colombia have launched a collaborative regional capacity-building initiative to counter cybercrime, bringing together law enforcement and government stakeholders from eight Caribbean nations in early October 2026.
The five-day workshop, which is part of a wider cooperation framework between Colombia and Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member states plus Aruba and Curaçao, centers on cross-border information sharing, experience exchange, and technical knowledge transfer to equip regional agencies to better prevent, probe, and respond to digital criminal activity. Participants from Aruba, Barbados, Curaçao, Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Suriname joined their counterparts from Belize and Colombia to build inter-agency working relationships ahead of future cross-border investigations.
Belize Police Commissioner Dr. A. Richard Rosado emphasized that the collaboration comes at a critical moment for the Latin America and Caribbean region, where uncoordinated national responses have left gaps that cybercriminals increasingly exploit. “As a region, we need to combine our capabilities,” Rosado noted. “We need to strengthen our network so that we can fight cybercrime on a collaborative front.”
Leading the knowledge exchange, Colombia’s National Police has deployed top cybercrime specialists to share expertise in high-priority emerging threat areas, including cryptocurrency-facilitated money laundering, AI-powered cyber attacks, and ransomware incidents. Captain José Alejandro Reyes Duque of Colombia’s Cybernetic Police Centre explained that the borderless nature of cybercrime makes unified action non-negotiable: cybercriminals often operate from jurisdictions far from their targets, with threat actors based in Europe regularly targeting victims across the Caribbean and Latin America, for example. To build a solid case, investigators rely on cross-border data sharing to access critical evidence such as IP address geolocation data and technical details of attack infrastructure that is hosted outside a country’s borders.
As part of Belize’s ongoing efforts to upgrade its national cybersecurity framework, the country is currently updating its core cybercrime legislation, a process that government officials say will benefit from international and regional best practices. Elton Bennett, Chief Executive Officer of Belize’s Ministry of Home Affairs, explained that the workshop aligns directly with the government’s strategic goal of aligning national cybersecurity efforts across agencies and partnering with regional actors to address shared threats. “This activity fits clearly within our strategic desire of bringing the different parts of the Government of Belize that are responsible for cybersecurity,” Bennett said. “We have the right partners at the table and working along with our regional counterparts.”
The initiative marks a deepening of security cooperation between Colombia and Caribbean nations, with organizers noting that similar knowledge-sharing workshops are planned for the coming year as the region works to build a unified, resilient cyber defense network.