Office of the National Security Advisor 4th Annual Security Seminar
Keynote Address
by
Dr the Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP
Prime Minister of Jamaica
at the
Office of the National Security Advisor 4th Annual Security Seminar
on
February 19, 2026
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Jamaica takes national security very seriously. When most Jamaicans hear the term national security, they immediately think crime and violence, and rightfully so. Crime and violence have been our number one threat to life and values. This administration has taken a more deliberate, strategic, and, I dare say, more sophisticated approach to national security.
We established the Office of the National Security Advisor, instituted the National Security Council as a committee of Cabinet, instituted various laws relative to security generally, we ensured that all law enforcement and security forces are members of the council, but most importantly, the council covers every subject. Yes, because by definition, national security is everything that makes the nation insecure, every threat.
The NSC is data-driven and intelligent in the sense that the organisation is a learning entity, and this is why we have now, for the 4th time, hosted this seminar, and we want to learn from experts, but we also want to share with experts what we have learned. As an intelligent entity, we want to impact how Jamaicans see their security, we want to impact how they act, and we also want to be thought leaders on security regionally and globally.
This 4th annual security seminar convenes at a defining and consequential time in Jamaica’s security journey. Over the past year, we achieved two outcomes that would once have been considered mutually exclusive: a historic reduction in violent crimes and a successful national response to a Category 5 hurricane, the third strongest hurricane ever recorded. These events do more than describe a challenging year; they confirm a strategic reality. Crime reduction, climate resilience, and border security are no longer separate policy domains. They are now inseparable pillars of Jamaica’s national security architecture.
In 2025, Jamaica recorded 673 murders, down from 1,147 in 2024, a 43% reduction. Over the last two years, our homicide rates have declined by more than 50%. This is the first time in 31 years that murders have fallen below 700, and that momentum has continued into 2026, with murders falling 55% in January 2026 compared to January 2025. These are not just statistics; these represent lives saved, community stabilized, and futures reclaimed.
These outcomes are not accidental. They are the result of deliberate, sustained institutional reform of Jamaica’s security architecture combined with disciplined operational execution, and over the last decade, we have increased capital investment in our security forces, strengthened intelligence fusion, expanded forensic capability, enhanced domain awareness and surveillance, and we have modernized command and control.
We established a new operational capability within the Jamaica Defence Force. This includes maritime, air and cyber command. We strengthened intelligence sharing networks, reinforced border and customs cooperation, and shifted decisively away from episodic emergency responses towards sustained intelligence-led joint operations. Central to this progress has been the all-out assault on gangs, and this we have put into a framework driven by coordinated multi-line of effort planning and targeting under the Joint Anti-Gang Task Force (JAGTF), supported by intelligence surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance capabilities.
What does this demonstrate?
It demonstrates that violence reduction and national security resilience are inseparable and mutually reinforcing; intelligence-led operations degrade organised violence, coordinated institutions strengthen state legitimacy, and sustained deployments create stability without reliance on permanent emergency measures. This is why National Security Resilience is now a central organising principle of Jamaica’s security strategy, but this work is not complete. We must recall that chronic violence in Jamaica has never been random. It has been organised, networked, and sustained by armed gangs operating in territorial clusters linked through illicit firearms trafficking, narcotics distribution, extortion networks, and overseas facilitators. These groups created microenvironments of fear and economic distortions. They control public spaces and undermine state authority.
The declining murder rate reflects the fact that we are systematically degrading the ecosystem of organised violence, disrupting leadership, constraining finance, and reducing territorial control, but resilience demands consolidation. Communities once controlled by gangs must become structurally and permanently inhospitable to their return. That means secure public spaces, reliable infrastructure, ordered community development, lawful economic opportunities, and consistent state presence. Where gangs once governed through fear, the state must now govern through presence, legitimacy, and the provision of opportunities.
Security gains must be locked in by development, or they will be contested again. These gains we have made must therefore be secured, embedded, and made sustainable. The urgency of this consolidation is heightened by the lessons of Hurricane Melissa. In October 2025, Hurricane Melissa constituted a defining national security event. It claimed 45 lives and affected approximately 760,000 individuals across western parishes. The JDF deployed nearly 2,000 service members under Operation Olive Branch, distributing over 284,000 care packages through eight logistics hubs and 23 humanitarian support areas.
The response demonstrated real institutional strength, enhanced joint planning, effective civil-military coordination and communications resilience, but it also exposed pressure points. Logistics chains were stretched, fuel and maintenance capacity strained, maritime and air assets diverted from border security to humanitarian relief. It said to Jamaica that, though we have tripled our national security budget, there are threats that we could face for which we don’t have the assets or other capabilities to respond.
We must continue to invest in our national security assets. In particular, local airlift was a challenge, and the government will make the necessary investment in both our local airlift and our maritime capabilities. These are critical to Jamaica’s ability to respond to natural disasters, but they’re also very effective assets in dealing with other kinds of kinetic security threats that we face.
Hurricane Melissa taught us an unavoidable lesson: climate shocks are no longer episodic emergencies. They are now permanent features of our national security environment. After Melissa, there can be no return to a security model that treats climate risks as peripheral. Beyond the humanitarian dimension, disasters represent strategic shocks; they redirect resources, stress institutional capacity, disrupt national logistics, and create windows of opportunity for illicit traffic and irregular migration. But more than that, they present an opportunity for the discontinuity of government. They can be at a scale where the provision of services can be terminated or disrupted.
Indeed, during Hurricane Melissa, local government services were disrupted, buildings totally destroyed, and police stations were totally destroyed. The good news, and the good thing that Jamaica can be proud of, is that there was no break in the provision of policing services. Indeed, my running joke with the commissioner of police is that he was seen with his machete clearing the Holland Bamboo roadway, so our assets were definitely affected, but our human resources played their role. Our security forces played their role admirably.
National security resilience, therefore, must be treated as a strategic imperative. Our security institutions must be able to anticipate, absorb, adapt, and recover from shocks, whether criminal, environmental, or geopolitical. Disaster risk management must be fully integrated into core security planning, budgeting, and capability development.
Effective border security also plays a key role. Jamaica sits within one of the most trafficked maritime corridors in the hemisphere. Trafficking networks are adaptive and multimodal. Exploiting containerised cargo, clandestine airstrips, unmanned aerial vehicles, and semi-submersible vessels are all part of the strategies used in the threats to our border security. Narcotic roots increasingly overlap with irregular migration networks.
In 2025, authorities seized more than 33,000 kilograms of marijuana and over 1,360 kilograms of cocaine. The JDF Coast Guard intercepted approximately 990 pounds of cocaine, valued at JMD$3.7 billion. That same year, Jamaica documented 124 known irregular migrant entries primarily from Haiti and Cuba, each requiring humanitarian processing, legal compliance, and sustained resource allocation.
For a small island developing state like Jamaica, sustained, unmanaged inflows imposed real economic, administrative, and social strain. Border security is therefore foundational to national security, economic security, disaster resilience and crime reduction. We must invest in layered surveillance, coastal radar, aerial reconnaissance and maritime patrols. We must strengthen forward operating presence, including facilities at Black River and the Pedro Cays, and we must integrate surveillance, customs, immigration, and interdiction data into a persistent common operating picture. Persistent domain awareness is resilience.
At the same time, we operate within a challenging geopolitical environment. The recently promulgated United States National Security Strategy has recentered the Western Hemisphere, linking irregular migration and transnational organised crime directly to US national security priorities. We see this as an opportunity to deepen regional cooperation and advance our shared goal of peace across the Caribbean.
Jamaica welcomes structured cooperation. We will continue to strengthen intelligence sharing, maritime coordination, and joint enforcement, but cooperation must remain balanced and principled; it must respect sovereignty. It must align with Jamaica’s national interests and regional leadership within CARICOM.
Peace and National Security Resilience is a competitive advantage for Jamaica. It is important to situate Jamaica’s progress in a wider hemispheric context. Sustained national security gains are uncommon across the region. Only a small number of countries have succeeded in achieving durable reductions in violence while strengthening institutions and preserving democratic governance. In that context, peace and security are not merely social goods; they are strategic economic assets.
For decades, crime and violence acted as a drag on Jamaica’s growth, deterring investments, driving talent away, and increasing the cost of doing business. Today, we are positioned not only to remove that drag but to convert national security resilience into a resource, into a competitive advantage, one that attracts investment capital, retains and draws talent, and underpins long-term inclusive economic growth. In an uncertain world, countries that can offer stability, predictability, and institutional strength will command a premium. Jamaica intends to be one of them.
Colleagues, the convergence of climate-related shocks, transnational crime, irregular migration, and geopolitical competition defines the security environment of our time. These forces will not recede. They will test us again, and they will test us even harder, but Jamaica does not confront this moment from a position of fragility; we confront it with measurable progress. We confront it, having reduced murders by more than 50% over two years. We confront it having protected our country through a Category 5 hurricane while maintaining internal security. There was never a break in our security environment, and we confront it with institutions that are stronger, more integrated, and more capable than ever.
Resilience, however, is not a temporary achievement; resilience must be permanent. That is why we must now move decisively from recovery to consolidation, from tactical success to institutional endurance, from gains achieved to gains secured. We must embed crime reduction with resilient institutions that can withstand shocks. We must protect reconstruction from criminal disruptions. We must harden our borders against illicit international networks, and we must ensure that every reclaimed community remains permanently inhospitable to organised violence and permanently open to lawful opportunities.
Peace, therefore, is not a pause between crises. Peace is not the quietening of guns alone. Peace is the deliberate construction of order, opportunity and trust built through strong institutions, secure borders, reliable infrastructure, and sustained political will. National security resilience is not an abstract concept. It is the bridge between violence reduction and long-term development. It is how Jamaica protects what it has achieved and how it advances what it aspires to become. The work continues, and Jamaica will not drift through this moment. We will shape our security outcomes. We will defend our sovereignty. We will turn national security resilience into a competitive advantage, attracting investment talent and opportunity in an uncertain world, and we will build a safer, stronger, and more resilient Jamaica, the place of choice to live, work, raise families, and retire in peaceful paradise for generations to come.
I thank you.