标签： Grenada

Against a backdrop of growing transnational threats to global maritime security, a senior law enforcement official from the Royal Grenada Police Force has represented the Caribbean island nation at a high-level international symposium focused on combating maritime crime in Lisbon, Portugal. Hosted at the Portuguese Judicial Police headquarters, the second Symposium for Public Prosecutors on Maritime Crimes ran from October 7 to 8, 2026, gathering legal and law enforcement delegates from 20 Atlantic-region nations with the shared goal of strengthening cross-border collaboration against illegal maritime activity.

The event centered on unpacking the most pressing legal and operational challenges posed by a wide spectrum of transnational maritime offenses, ranging from drug and human trafficking and piracy to illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing — a pervasive threat that undermines both coastal ecosystems and economic stability for small island nations. The core training curriculum emphasized a critical, often overlooked, principle: integrating specialized legal expertise at every stage of the maritime law enforcement process, from initial surveillance and threat detection, through operational planning, evidence collection and preservation, criminal investigation, and final prosecution.

For Grenada, a small island developing state whose economy and national security are deeply tied to its surrounding maritime waters, this focus holds exceptional strategic importance. The country’s ability to enforce maritime rules effectively depends not only on successful interception of illegal activity at sea, but on building robust, legally sound cases that can withstand judicial scrutiny and result in successful prosecution.

Inspector Borris George, Grenada’s representative at the symposium, joined a dedicated working session titled “Maritime Crime: Bridging Legal and Operational Perspectives” alongside counterparts from Côte d’Ivoire, Belgium, and São Tomé and Príncipe. The session offered delegates a hands-on platform to exchange practical insights on shared operational and legal hurdles, as well as collaborative strategies to strengthen coordination between frontline law enforcement agencies and public prosecution authorities.

Randy Connaught, Commissioner of Police for Grenada, highlighted the tangible value of the training for the island nation. “This training strengthens our ability to investigate and prosecute maritime crime and reinforces the importance of coordination between our operational officers, investigators and prosecutors. Building this specialised capacity is essential as Grenada responds to increasingly complex transnational threats within our maritime space,” Connaught noted.

The symposium was a collaborative effort organized by the Atlantic Centre in partnership with the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre Narcotics (MAOC-N), EnMAR+, the Portuguese Judicial Police, and the Portuguese Public Prosecution Service. Caricom IMPACS served as one of the key supporting institutional partners, and it was through coordination between Caricom IMPACS and the Atlantic Centre that Grenada was able to participate in the event.

Grenada is currently in the final stages of formalizing its membership in the Atlantic Centre, a process that builds on years of ongoing engagement coordinated by Special Envoy for Oceans Ambassador Jerry Enoe, in collaboration with Grenada’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Once finalized, full membership will give Grenada access to a structured, long-term platform for sustained maritime security cooperation, ongoing specialized professional training, and targeted technical exchange with other Atlantic nations.

The insights and capacity built through the symposium extend far beyond individual law enforcement efforts, contributing to the strengthening of Grenada’s entire national maritime security architecture. Enhanced investigative and prosecutorial capabilities benefit all of Grenada’s agencies operating in the maritime domain, including the Royal Grenada Police Force, Coast Guard, Fisheries Division, Customs, and Immigration. By boosting national capacity to crack down on IUU fishing, trafficking networks, and transnational organized crime, Grenada is better positioned to protect the maritime spaces that underpin its critical economic sectors: commercial fisheries, tourism, international trade, and the country’s growing blue economy as a whole.

Ambassador Enoe emphasized that this type of cross-border partnership addresses a specific gap for small island states like Grenada. “For Grenada, partnerships such as this provide practical opportunities to build the specialised capacity that small island states require to govern and protect increasingly important ocean spaces. As Grenada moves to formalise its membership in the Atlantic Centre, we see significant value in deeper cooperation, knowledge exchange and access to training that can strengthen our broader maritime security and blue economy agenda,” Enoe stated.

This report was issued via the Prime Minister’s Office of Grenada.

On October 15, 2026, the Prime Minister of Grenada delivered a keynote address marking the 18th annual observance of Caribbean Statistics Day, centering his remarks on this year’s urgent and timely theme: “Harmonising Data and Strengthening Resilience.” In his message, the Prime Minister emphasized that for the Caribbean Community (Caricom) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) across the region, statistical data is far more than a collection of numbers — it is a foundational pillar of smart governance and long-term stability.

Systemic injustice, not a lack of global food production, lies at the root of the ongoing global hunger crisis that affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide, development analysts warn, as this year’s World Food Day amplifies a renewed call for collective, innovative action to transform broken food systems.

As the United Nations highlights, roughly 673 million people – more than 8 percent of the global population – currently face persistent undernourishment and chronic hunger. Even more strikingly, 30 percent of all food produced globally is lost or wasted every year, creating a devastating paradox that underscores the urgency of addressing systemic failures in global agrifood systems. Observed every October 16, World Food Day was created to build global awareness around hunger, malnutrition, and the urgent need for equitable, sustainable food systems that work for all people. The day serves as a permanent reminder that access to safe, nutrient-dense food is not a luxury for the privileged – it is a fundamental human right that all global actors have a responsibility to protect. It brings together national governments, local communities, and individual stakeholders to reaffirm a shared global commitment to eradicating hunger, strengthening food security, and building a future where healthy, affordable food is accessible to every person on the planet.

This year’s World Food Day theme – *Innovate today. Nourish tomorrow.* – centers on the urgent need to transform global agrifood systems to combat persistent hunger and lay the foundation for a food-secure future. The theme directly confronts the stark contradiction that defines the current crisis: while the world already produces enough food to feed every global resident, 645 million people still face chronic hunger, and 2.7 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet. Driving this gap are overlapping cascading crises: climate-driven shocks that disrupt agricultural production, growing global economic instability that pushes food prices out of reach for vulnerable communities, and widespread conflict that displaces populations and destroys food infrastructure.

Innovation is reshaping every stage of the food value chain, from on-farm production and post-harvest storage to transportation, distribution, and retail marketing. Meaningful innovation integrates cutting-edge advances in science and technology with the traditional knowledge, generations of experience, and inherent ingenuity of smallholder farmers, artisanal fishers, pastoral herders, and forest-dependent communities – with a specific focus on including marginalized groups including women, youth, and Indigenous Peoples. Transforming global agrifood systems cannot be achieved by any single group; it requires coordinated collaboration between local communities, private investors, policymakers, and social entrepreneurs to scale solutions that work for the most vulnerable. This year’s theme acts as an urgent reminder that the food security of future generations depends entirely on the ethical, forward-thinking choices and collaborative investments that global stakeholders make today.

For the Caribbean Community (Caricom), the crisis of food insecurity is particularly acute, due to the region’s heavy reliance on imported food to meet domestic demand and supply the large tourism sector that forms the backbone of many local economies. Between 2018 and 2020, the total regional food import bill reached $13.76 billion USD, equal to roughly 5 percent of the bloc’s combined gross domestic product. Caricom heads of government have committed to cutting the region’s large food import dependency by 25 percent by 2025. The ongoing implementation of the Caricom Agri-Food Systems Strategy across member states is designed to help hit this target by prioritizing support for domestic production of high-import priority crops and goods that the region currently sources mostly from overseas. The Caribbean’s geographic location also leaves the region disproportionately vulnerable to climate-fueled natural disasters including hurricanes and earthquakes, which regularly destroy crops and disrupt food supply chains. Between March 2021 and 2022, at least four Caribbean nations – the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Haiti, and Suriname – recorded monthly food price increases higher than 5 percent. Nowhere in the region is the crisis more severe than in Haiti, where 5.7 million Haitians face rapidly deteriorating food security that has pushed millions to the brink of famine.

Research consistently shows that food insecurity does not affect all population groups equally: systemic social and economic disparities rooted in race, gender, sexual orientation, limited economic opportunity, and income inequality leave marginalized communities far more vulnerable to being unable to access consistent, quality, nourishing food. Groups facing the highest risk of food insecurity include young non-Hispanic Black males, middle-aged Black women, Hispanic communities, children in households with unemployed or low-income parents, and people and households living with disabilities. Agriculture lies at the core of achieving universal food security, and recent data from the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals update shows that global public expenditure on agriculture hit a record high of more than $700 billion USD in 2023. Even with this increased investment, the immediate dangers of widespread food insecurity for vulnerable societies remain clear and present.

The United Nations emphasizes that every stakeholder has a part to play in protecting and advancing global food security. Translating innovative ideas into real-world impact requires intentional cross-sector partnership and targeted investment. Governments hold a central role in creating an enabling environment for progress, through investing in public agricultural research, strengthening rural infrastructure that connects smallholders to markets, and implementing policies that expand responsible access to innovation for marginalized producers. The private sector can contribute by mobilizing much-needed capital investment, strengthening resilient local and global supply chains, creating quality jobs, and developing scalable new business models that reach underserved communities that have long been left out of formal food systems. Cross-sector partnerships between academic and research institutions, civil society organizations, producer associations, the United Nations system, and other global development actors are essential to move evidence-based solutions from the lab and the drawing board to on-the-ground action that changes lives for the better.

On Thursday, the United States announced a sweeping new multi-million-dollar aid package for the Caribbean region during a landmark political dialogue with the Caribbean Community (Caricom), where leaders from the 15-nation bloc pushed to turn high-level diplomatic exchanges into tangible, people-focused commitments spanning energy security, infrastructure, and crisis response in Haiti.

The talks, hosted at the political level in response to a request from Caricom leaders, followed a productive February meeting between bloc leaders and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Caricom summit in St. Kitts and Nevis. St. Lucia Prime Minister Phillip J. Pierre, who currently serves as Caricom’s chairman, opened the discussion by emphasizing the deep, interconnected ties between the regional bloc and the U.S. that extend far beyond formal diplomacy.

“Our countries are connected by geography, commerce, tourism, family and friendship. The Caribbean Community is a close neighbour, a stable democratic partner and a region open to investment,” Pierre said, addressing U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, who led the American delegation. “We seek a more strategic partnership, sustained by regular dialogue and measured by improvements in our people’s lives.”

In response to Caricom’s priorities, Landau laid out a broad package of new U.S. commitments totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, tailored to address security, connectivity and development needs across the region. The package includes an additional $55.5 million to strengthen Caribbean law enforcement capacities, alongside $11 million in Foreign Military Financing to boost regional security force capabilities. A centerpiece of the investment is $175.8 million allocated for secure digital infrastructure through the Caribbean and Central America Undersea Cables Programme.

“Ultimately, a modern economy cannot exist without a secure network. We all have seen vulnerabilities,” Landau said. “This will provide trusted, high-speed connectivity across the region to build resilient, secure networks that serve your people and not outside interests.” He added that beyond the total dollar figure, the package reflects a long-term U.S. reaffirmation of its commitment to the strategically critical neighboring region.

Pierre framed Caricom’s core priorities for the dialogue in plain, people-centered terms: for Caribbean households, energy security means affordable electricity; economic cooperation means jobs, inward investment and expanded opportunity; security cooperation means safer local communities; and disaster preparedness means guaranteed rapid assistance when hurricanes or other crises strike. He called on delegates to turn the day’s discussions into actionable commitments, including targeted financing for climate-resilient energy systems, more predictable trade frameworks, stronger commercial partnerships, enhanced secure digital infrastructure, improved public health systems and disaster response coordination, and cross-border collaboration to dismantle organized crime and stop the flow of illicit firearms.

Top of the bloc’s urgent agenda is the ongoing political and security collapse in Haiti, where armed criminal gangs have launched a coordinated push to overthrow the country’s elected government. Pierre called the Haiti crisis a non-negotiable priority for the dialogue, and thanked the U.S. for its support of the recent extension of the United Nations mandate for Haiti’s multinational Gang Suppression Force (GSF). The UN Security Council voted 12-0 to extend the GSF mission for an additional six months, keeping the operation active through March 31, 2027.

The mandate renewal comes as Haiti’s security situation deteriorates at an alarming rate: armed gangs now control large swathes of the capital Port-au-Prince and have expanded their control into rural communities, carrying out systematic killings, mass kidnappings, widespread sexual violence and extortion to consolidate power. UN data indicates that roughly 1.5 million Haitians – 12% of the country’s total population – have been displaced by the ongoing violence, with more than 3,000 people killed and over 1,500 injured between October 2025 and April 2026.

The GSF replaced an earlier Kenyan-led security mission, and currently has between 1,500 and 1,600 personnel deployed across Haiti. Its core mandates are to restore public order, secure critical state infrastructure, and enable the Haitian government to resume basic functions. The mission is on track to reach its full deployment quota of 5,500 personnel by October 2026. Pierre noted that Caricom continues to support Haiti’s path to stability through its Eminent Persons Group (EPG), chaired by former St. Lucia Prime Minister Dr. Kenny Anthony. He emphasized that sustained international assistance and inclusive, credible national elections are essential to restoring public confidence and enabling Haiti to return to long-term democratic stability.

The dialogue also addressed migration and immigration, issues Pierre said carry profound implications for Caribbean communities and cross-border people-to-people ties. Pierre stressed that the true impact of the talks would be measured by follow-through, not just dialogue, calling for participants to link high-level political discussion to sustained technical cooperation, clear priority-setting, and formal accountability arrangements for next steps. The Guyana-based Caricom Secretariat will coordinate the bloc’s technical work alongside national authorities and regional institutions to advance the outcomes of the meeting.

“Caricom comes to this table ready to listen, ready to engage and ready to build a partnership that delivers mutual benefit, with respect for our sovereignty and our shared aspirations,” Pierre added.

In his address, Landau echoed the long-standing importance of U.S.-Caribbean ties, noting that the U.S. has benefited enormously from immigration and cultural exchange from the region, from founding father Alexander Hamilton to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who led the State Department 25 years ago. He openly acknowledged that for years, U.S. foreign policy failed to give the Western Hemisphere – and the Caribbean specifically – the attention it deserves, despite its proximity and strategic importance.

“For far too long, we have been looking at things that are happening halfway across the world, and we have been ignoring things that are happening right in our own neighbourhood,” Landau said. “I think it’s very important that we recognise some of the flaws of recent years in our policies and we talk together to commit to ways that we can build institutional relationships.”

Landau emphasized that the core goal of the renewed dialogue is to build a lasting, institutional foundation for U.S.-Caribbean relations that does not depend on personal relationships alone. While personal ties play an important role in diplomacy, he said, a durable partnership requires structural, long-term institutional cooperation that will survive across changes in leadership.

Noting that the U.S. does not claim to have all the answers, Landau stressed that the dialogue is intended as a two-way exchange, not a series of lectures from Washington. “You all are sovereign countries; you are going to decide your fate,” he said. “I truly believe we wouldn’t be having this meeting if the Secretary and I didn’t believe that what is in your interests is also in our interests; that there are many, many areas where we should be deepening cooperation where there are great solutions.”

Beyond one-off grant funding to address immediate needs, Landau said the U.S. is focused on fostering long-term private sector investment that creates sustainable economic growth and durable ties between the two sides. “Because ultimately, a particular grant can be fine to fill a particular need, but for a long-term growth strategy, a particular grant isn’t going to fix that,” he explained. He noted that U.S. economic strength is driven by the private sector, and the U.S. government’s core role is to act as a convener to connect American businesses with investment opportunities in the Caribbean, while ensuring Caribbean leaders can shape what cooperation looks like to meet their own national priorities.