Maharaj urges victim-centred approach to tackling organised crime

Jus­tice Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj has called for a more bal­anced and vic­tim-sen­si­tive ap­proach to com­bat­ing or­gan­ised crime, urg­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers to ad­dress the so­cial fac­tors that draw women in­to crim­i­nal net­works while main­tain­ing strong ac­tion against crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Ma­haraj made the ap­peal while de­liv­er­ing the open­ing ad­dress at the EL PAc­C­TO 2.0 Re­gion­al Work­shop on The Role of Women in Or­gan­ised Crime in the Caribbean on Tues­day.

The work­shop, host­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Eu­ro­pean Union and re­gion­al part­ners un­der the Eu­ro­pean Pro­gramme of As­sis­tance to Com­bat Cor­rup­tion and Or­gan­ised Crime in Latin Amer­i­ca (EL PAc­C­TO), brought to­geth­er se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials, le­gal ex­perts and pol­i­cy­mak­ers from across the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca.

Speak­ing at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny, Ma­haraj said the chang­ing na­ture of transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime re­quires a more com­pre­hen­sive strat­e­gy that goes be­yond tra­di­tion­al law en­force­ment mea­sures.

He said gov­ern­ments must de­vel­op a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the root caus­es, so­cial dri­vers and the spe­cif­ic ways women be­come in­volved in or­gan­ised crime in or­der to de­vel­op more ef­fec­tive re­spons­es.

Ma­haraj stressed that sus­tain­able so­lu­tions must com­bine ro­bust ac­tion against crim­i­nal en­ter­pris­es with mea­sures that pro­tect and re­ha­bil­i­tate vic­tims.

He said ad­dress­ing or­gan­ised crime re­quires a frame­work that is equal­ly fo­cused on dis­man­tling crim­i­nal op­er­a­tions and sup­port­ing those who have been ex­ploit­ed or vic­timised.

The re­gion­al work­shop is aimed at strength­en­ing co­op­er­a­tion among par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries by pro­mot­ing more ef­fec­tive, trans­par­ent and rights-based crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tems.

EL PAc­C­TO sup­ports col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Eu­ro­pean Union, Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean to im­prove jus­tice sys­tems, re­in­force the rule of law and en­hance re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

Par­tic­i­pants are ex­pect­ed to ex­am­ine the role of women in or­gan­ised crime, share best prac­tices and ex­plore poli­cies that strength­en pre­ven­tion, pro­tec­tion and pros­e­cu­tion ef­forts while safe­guard­ing hu­man rights.

The Min­istry of Jus­tice said it re­mains com­mit­ted to ad­vanc­ing leg­isla­tive and in­sti­tu­tion­al re­forms, as well as re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ini­tia­tives, that strength­en the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem while pro­tect­ing vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions.

The min­istry added that con­tin­ued co­op­er­a­tion with re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners is es­sen­tial to ad­dress­ing in­creas­ing­ly so­phis­ti­cat­ed forms of or­gan­ised crime and en­sur­ing that jus­tice sys­tems re­main ef­fec­tive, in­clu­sive and re­spon­sive to the evolv­ing se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges fac­ing the Caribbean.