- RICARDO MAKYN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Juan Espinola, resident representative, United Nations Development Programme to Jamaica.
Earl Moxam, Senior Gleaner Writer
WITH JAMAICA figuring significantly in the world's crime stakes, a prominent United Nations envoy is warning of dire consequences for the country if it does not bring the situation under control.
Juan Carlos Espinola, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Country Representative in Jamaica, believes the country's potential for prosperity and greatness is being stifled by the crime factor.
"If the nation does not solve this problem, which is very basic, then all of that potential is going to be eroded, and we have seen that one of the major driving forces of the economy, which is tourism, is going to be taken back ... because the reports that are coming out of the country are worrisome. Jamaica is already second in the Latin American-Caribbean Hemisphere in relation to violence, and this is the kind of thing that puts a country's risk factor up," Espinola told The Sunday Gleaner.
The UNDP representative, speaking earlier at the launch of the World Investment Report, 2005, had spoken of the importance, to Jamaica, of controlling the country's spiralling crime rate, if it were to continue attracting significant inflows of Foreign Direct Investments.
In 2004 Jamaica secured US$650 million, down from the US$721 million invested in the economy the previous year. While this represented a decline, it nevertheless preserved Jamaica's position in the top ten investment locations in Latin America and the Caribbean, with prospects for a rebound this year due to heavy investments in the bauxite-alumina and tourism sectors.
With these factors in mind, Espinola told The Sunday Gleaner that Jamaica stood at a major crossroads, faced with the prospect of great success, threatened mainly by the crime situation.
Over the last 35 years the country's murder toll has largely been on an unrelenting upswing. In 1970 there were 152 murders. By 1975 the annual figure had risen to 266. Five years later, 1980, influenced largely by the unprecedented level of political killings, the number of murders in the year jumped to 889. The figure came back down in the years immediately following, and, in 1985, stood at 434. Murders totalled 542 in 1990 and 780 in 1995. Last year the figure was 1,471, and up to Thursday of last week there had been 1,260 such killings.
These grim statistics have catapulted Jamaica to an unenviable position among the countries with the highest murder rates, alongside the likes of South Africa and Colombia.
Against that background, Espinola is recommending that there be "scientific analysis of how communities and families interact in today's Jamaica, and why violence is so strong, even at the family level, that children and adolescents are expressing themselves in those same terms at the community level without the capacity to actually solve their troubles in a negotiated fashion, in a conflict resolution stage."
SEVER POLITICS AND CRIMINALITY LINKS
Similarly, he said, there was need for careful examination of the linkages between the country's politics and criminality, and to cut these links wherever they exist.
Having lived in ten countries over the last 25 years, the U.N. envoy expressed great admiration for the Jamaican people's inventiveness and achievements in the fields of arts, culture and sports. All areas which, he believes, have not yet been fully tapped.
"Jamaicans are so powerful and they do so well outside of the country, yet when they come back into the country there is something going on wrong. It's like you have two societies which are fighting with each other: One that actually excels and the other one that is having a lot of problems to do that. And here's where social and economic policies need to be focused, so that this gap can be breached," he concluded.
