On Friday 20th May, Barbados renewed its commitment to the fight against illicit maritime trafficking through the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Ministry of National Security and the EU-funded SEACOP project.
In the presence of the EU Ambassador to the Eastern Caribbean, the Eastern Caribbean States, the OECS and CARICOM/CARIFORUM, H.E. Malgorzata Wasilewska, the two parties emphasised the strategic importance of this continuous cooperation.
“We are proud to be signing this MoU with our Barbadian partners, who expressed their strong commitment to combat drug trafficking and other traffics perpetrated by organised criminal groups in Barbados and the region,” stated Dominique Bucas, SEACOP Project Director, adding “Barbados and SEACOP have been crucial partners in this endeavour for the past 7 years.”
For her part, H.E. Malgorzata Wasilewska, noted: “There is simply no security issue where less cooperation is the answer. Traffickers are working together across borders, and so must we. The trafficking of illicit goods – including drugs – has a devastating impact on social and economic development as well as on public health. Where the stakes are the highest, we cannot succeed without international cooperation in intelligence sharing and collaborative enforcement.”
In its daily implementation, the Global Illicit Flows Programme and its different components, such as SEACOP, strive to provide mechanisms for West African, Latin American, Caribbean and European partners to cooperate and integrate in a way that would equal the level of close cooperation and high mobility of criminal networks.
“SEACOP and its sister projects have come a long way in building up capacities and encouraging inter-agency as well as international cooperation. The EU remains deeply committed to this approach. We are connected to the world and we know that if you do not deal in time with a crisis abroad, the crisis will come to you,” the EU Ambassador added.
Over the last ten years, SEACOP has provided support to a number of institutions fighting transnational organised crime in Barbados, leading to a significant rise in the number of seizures of illicit goods. With the launch of its fifth phase, SEACOP V seeks to expand its scope of action with local partners, to develop new partnerships with local and regional actors and to integrate further countries into its network combating illicit flows across the transatlantic axis.
