Government officials and experts from across the Caribbean participated in the subregional preparatory meeting of the XIV session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, an ECLAC subsidiary body, held in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago on 18 June 2019 to examine progress as well as obstacles for advancing women’s autonomy and gender equality in the context of the Caribbean’s changing economic scenarios.

The event was organized by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) subregional headquarters for the Caribbean and ECLAC’s Division for Gender Affairs as the Technical Secretariat for the Regional Conference on Women, in partnership with UN-Women and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and recorded the participation of more than 17 ECLAC member countries, including Anguilla, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Chile, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sint Maarten, Trinidad and Tobago and Turks and Caicos Islands, as well as several agencies of the UN system, members from civil society organizations and academia.

Welcoming government officials and experts from across the Caribbean, Gaietry Pargass, Senior Legal Adviser in the Office of the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, underscored that “over the past five years, Trinidad and Tobago has strengthened its legal, policy and programmatic frameworks in its efforts to achieve gender equality, more specifically, its initiatives towards the dismantling of structural barriers that impede gender equality”…[+]

SAN SALVADOR– El Salvador President Nayib Bukele ruled out negotiations with criminal gangs yesterday and vowed to go after their finances in a bid to reduce violence in the Central American country. Bukele, 37, took office this month pledging to bring down a sky-high murder rate and reduce poverty, corruption and mass migration to the United States.

“We are not open to having a dialogue with criminal groups,” said the political maverick who ended three decades of two-party rule with his election victory in February. “We have not received communications from the gangs and we don’t expect any either,” Bukele said at a swearing-in ceremony for his deputy justice minister. El Salvador is one of a trio of countries in Central America, along with Guatemala and Honduras, that has seen thousands of desperate migrants flee raging gangland violence and bleak economic prospects over the past couple years.

Last week, the director of the police force vowed to do more to fight organized crime and said it was raiding dangerous areas to recover territory from the gangs, capture their leaders and confiscate arms, illicit cash and drugs.(Reuters)…[+]

The five Jamaican fishermen picked up by United States Homeland Security investigators in September 2017 off the Haitian coast were charged with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute some 613 pounds of marijuana, according to an affidavit filed by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jesus Pertierra.

Pertierra, who filed the affidavit in the United States Southern District Court of Florida, said the charges followed an incident in which the fishermen were seen throwing bales overboard after they were spotted in a go-fast vessel approximately 12 nautical miles south-west of Navassa Island, on September 24, 2017.Pertierra named the five men who are from St Ann as Robert Weir, the captain of the Jamaican vessel; Patrick Ferguson; David Williams; Luther Patterson; and George Thompson. However, more recent reports following the decision by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to file a lawsuit last Wednesday in Florida, claiming that the Coast Guard had improperly detained four Jamaicans, excluded Thompson. No mention has been made of him in local reports either, and there has been no indication of his whereabouts.(Jamaica Observer)…[+]