Kamla Persad-Bissessar, Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, stated:  “The notion that the Caribbean is a ‘zone of peace’ has become a false ideal.”  For too many in the region, peace is “an elusive promise glimpsed, never grasped”.  In 2024, Trinidad and Tobago, a nation of 1.4 million, recorded 623 murders — 41 per 100,000 — over 40 per cent gang-related, driven by narcotics and firearms.  In the last 25 years, the country has experienced over 10,000 murders — equivalent to losing 1 per cent of the adult population. She therefore noted that President Donald Trump’s comments on the relentless narco- and human trafficking, organized crime and illegal immigration “are correct”.

Welcoming legal immigration, she said that “illegal immigration neglects all checks and balances and will only create long-term disorder” as most will not assimilate into their adopted societies — inevitably leading to greater poverty, crime and cultural antagonism.  “This, then, is not phobia or hyperbole; it is simply the stark, naked truth,” she said.  Recent increased protections at the United States southern border have rerouted illegal migration of drug cartels and criminal gangs “into the Eastern Caribbean”, she noted — voicing gratitude for United States military presence in the Southern Caribbean, inhibiting drug cartels in her country.  Unless forceful and aggressive actions are taken, “evil drug cartels will continue their societal destruction”, believing affected nations will unreservedly subscribe to morals and ethics “which they themselves blatantly flout”, she said.  “We will fight fire with fire within the law,” she affirmed.

Citing the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 2025 World Drug Report, she recalled how the global drug economy destabilizes institutions, corrodes democracy and undermines development.  “The cartels and the Governments that enable them are taking us for fools,” she stressed — and nowhere is this warning more explicit than in Haiti, where armed gangs, political collapse and food insecurity converged to overwhelm democracy and create a protracted emergency.  Commending Kenya for leading the Multinational Security Support Mission, she urged the international community to support the United States and Panama’s proposed Gang Suppression Force to deploy a 5,500-member force to “subdue the gangs and restore order in Haiti”.

On climate, she stressed that developed countries “should not force-feed a climate agenda onto developing countries and blackmail them into cooperation”.  Adding “insult” to injury, many of those States supporting imposition of the aggressive climate agenda “actually achieved developed-nation status and prosperity through highly environmentally destructive and polluting industries”, she said.  While there is indeed room for renewable energy, fossil fuels remain “essential for our continued survival”.  Her Government will, “within reason”, support protecting the environment for future generations; but independent nations must create climate policy balancing development goals and poverty eradication policies with environmental protection.  “Trinidad and Tobago may be small in size, but we are large in conviction,” she stressed.  “Let us listen to each other with an objective mindset” as peace and prosperity require honest, sometimes uncomfortable decisions.