2025 National Security Seminar
Keynote Address
By
Dr the Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP
Prime Minister of Jamaica
at the
2025 National Security Seminar
On
February 6, 2025
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We’re too late in the year for me to wish you a happy new year, but I wish you, nonetheless. And I thank our moderator and those who have spoken before me for greeting everyone.
This is the third year that I’ve had the privilege of delivering this keynote at this important seminar and I commend the Office of the National Security Advisor for consistently bringing together the minds working on what is arguably the most pressing national issue. The theme of this seminar, “Security Without Borders: Aligning Local, Regional, and International Efforts to Build a Resilient Future”, encapsulates the fundamental reality that the major security threats we face are not confined to national borders. They are transnational, requiring cooperative and often coordinated solutions that transcend borders, ideologies, and institutional silos.
Jamaica, like many of our Caribbean neighbours, faces the acute threat posed by organized crime, which is responsible for the extraordinarily high murder rate with which we have lived for decades. This problem was initially made worse and has been amplified by illegal firearms brought in from countries where they are probably much less regulated and where illegal activities such as the international drug trade may be present. Jamaican gangs and other bad actors import the tools of their violent trade through, and I think we would all agree when I say this, our porous borders via connections they have cultivated and maintained in other jurisdictions.
A 2023 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report highlighted that traffickers exploit legal loopholes by acquiring guns through secondary markets, unregulated private sales and gun shows that do not require stringent background checks. These firearms are then concealed in commercial shipments and transported via couriers and informal channels to avoid detection by law enforcement, and they also get through because the persons importing these weapons have managed to corrupt our systems.
Now, as some of you may know, I’m not only a policymaker but I’m also a student and a researcher in this area and I have analyzed firearms trace data from guns recovered by the JCF alongside homicide and shooting statistics which confirms what we all have suspected, Jamaica’s high levels of violent crime are directly tied to the illicit trafficking of firearms.
In fact, that is where our murder rate crisis began. When violence surged in the 1970s, it was not just because of heightened political polarization and rivalry, it was because guns entered into the equation. And as we all know, Jamaica does not have a thriving industry in manufacturing firearms nor is it legal to possess one without a license, so the guns didn’t just appear. They came from outside and they got here illegally, guns were brought in.
More than 80% of homicides in Jamaica are committed using guns. Jamaica is an outlier in this regard but in Latin America and Caribbean region, the statistic can go as high as 70%. Globally, that statistic is about 40% so on average, about 40% of homicides are committed with guns but for Jamaica, our statistic is double that at 80%. This is a key indicator of how deeply firearm trafficking and availability drive lethal violence in Jamaica and indeed the region.
Another interesting statistic to consider is that the civilian ownership of guns in Jamaica is about 8.8 per 100. In the United States, it’s about 46 so there is a much higher rate of civilian gun ownership and Jamaica’s civilian gun ownership is very low yet murder/homicides by firearm is the highest in the region so that speaks to the concentration of firearms in a particular set of persons within the population who are willing to use them, gangs.
These guns, as we know, originate from outside our borders and chiefly from the United States. Between 2013 and 2023, 70% of the guns recovered came to Jamaica via the US but the data also reveals that a great portion of the individuals who purchased those guns in the United States in states such as Florida and Georgia were Jamaican-born. So yes, most of the guns are coming in from the US, but they are being brought in by persons who are Jamaican born connected to Jamaica. This of course does not come as a surprise to members of the security forces because they have long been aware that gang networks in Jamaica maintain critical international nodes to facilitate the supply of resources such as weapons. We also know that a meaningful proportion of gang activity here, the driveby shootings, the reprisals, and the multiple casualty incidents are done according to directives coming from individuals living abroad including Jamaicans who are living abroad formally paying taxes and being compliant with immigration rules.
Another significant portion of the straw purchasers, as they are termed in the United States, those who buy guns on the secondary market and illegally dispose of them or import them; a significant portion of them is Haitian born which further substantiates that weapons have been coming from the US to Jamaica by way of Haiti. The security forces have long reported on the maritime trade that exists between Jamaican gangs and Haitian gangs which facilitates the flow of arms from Haiti to here. The crisis in Haiti is perhaps the most alarming example of what can happen when organized criminal groups grow powerful enough to challenge the very integrity of the state, but the power of the gangs is also dependent on cross-border connections.
Elements of their networks embedded in the Haitian diaspora in the US and Europe facilitate armed smuggling as do their linkages with elements in the neighbouring Dominican Republic. Moreover, armed groups in both Haiti and the DR have strong connections to and receive weapons and narcotics from cartels and militant groups in Latin America. Over the past five years, South American and Mexican cartels have made inroads into once-peaceful countries like Ecuador making links with local gangs causing a sudden explosion in homicides. Now, the homicide rate in countries like Ecuador is exceeding 40 per hundred thousand. That is unprecedented in their context but to bring this discourse back home for a moment and for a reality check, that level of violence has been normalized in Jamaica for at least three decades.
The point of highlighting these regional challenges and reiterating the external force through which firearms enter Jamaica is not to absolve us of responsibility or to cast blame on other countries for enabling the threat we now face. I have never been one to ask others to take responsibility for my problem and we have not conducted our security policy in this way. We have to be brutally honest with ourselves, we have not placed the effort and resources behind strengthening our security apparatus to ensure that illegal guns don’t make it, as they say, across our borders and we can’t conduct our security policy depending on another country to secure our borders for us.
For too long we have been ineffective in putting in place the measures at our airports and our seaports to properly scan our containers, to put in place a well-developed and robust integrity mechanism for those persons who operate security at our ports, for putting in place the radars necessary to have domain awareness and control of vessels coming into our waters, to track the vessels in our waters that may be illegally carrying weapons and other contraband. Since I have been chairing the National Security Council, our security policy has been to take responsibility for our own security, make the investment in a maritime patrol aircraft, and we’re going to make the investment in a second one, make the investments in our offshore patrol vessels which we have built out and we’re going to make more investments in that, make the investments in our radars which we have done.
Now, we are going to make a significant investment in ensuring that we have all the scanners in our ports so that a higher percentage of containers and goods coming into Jamaica can be appropriately scanned. We have given a directive to the Customs Agency to ensure that there is through various public-private partnership modalities that there is a full rollout of all the scanners we need for all our formal ports of entry. We will take responsibility for stopping the illegal guns coming into Jamaica.
As I’ve said, casting blame is neither productive nor a solution. It offers the illusion of action while displacing accountability allowing those with power to escape responsibility. My intent is to ensure that Jamaica takes its own security into its own hands. Now, having said that, the theme is inherently about cooperation but as they say, one hand cannot clap, but if you have one hand in your pocket and the other one out, it’s still not gonna clap so we have to bring all hands to the table and you can’t come to the table with the hand necessarily outstretched as a mendicant or a beggar. You have to come to the table with all the muscles in your body ready to work and that is how Jamaica is coming to the global cooperative table as a strong independent nation looking to play its part and take responsibility for its own destiny and not depending on anyone else to protect us or save us.
Jamaican gangs do not exist in a vacuum demarked by our borders, and they constitute one sector of a regional network of criminal organizations that strengthen each other through cooperation and trading in arms, drugs, and yes, intelligence. The gangs trade in intelligence. It has been said that Latin America and the Caribbean is the most violent region in the world that is not at war and with respect, I would say that this is a fallacy. Countries in this region may not be at war with each other but believe me when I tell you, countries in this region are at war. They are at war with gangs, they are at war with transnational criminal organizations. Ecuador declared a state of internal conflict. We are under an illusion and that illusion will only allow the threat of criminal enterprise which we euphemistically call a gang to grow to the level where one day we wake up and realize that we have allowed a monster. Well thankfully, I have never been under any illusion in this regard and Jamaica will never be threatened to the point of instability of the state by gangs if I have anything to do with it.
Currently, there are several armed groups threatening states right across Latin America, Central America, South America and in the Caribbean. When you stop to think of it, island paradise such as the Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, St Lucia, St. Kitts, Haiti is the extreme, Venezuela the extreme, but El Salvador has dealt with their problem but you still have Honduras, Guatemala. As I said before, Ecuador, and Colombia seem to be slipping back into more than just gangs, and other kinds of conflict.
Now, certain developments, however, make me optimistic that as a region we are waking up to the reality that the threat posed by armed groups is not one of run-of-the-mill criminality. Most recently, the new administration in Washington officially labelled cartels in Mexico as terrorists. That may have struck some as an extreme designation but, not me. I stood on this stage last year, and I outright called gangs that operate here terrorists. When you see the events in Cherry Tree Lane, we call it a massacre; eight people were killed. In Harbour Heights, five people were killed innocently. On Waltham Park Road, four people were killed innocently, no reason. The only adequate descriptor is that they are terrorists.
And as I said, when we call them gangs, it’s a euphemism. It raises these issues of social injustice and because they were denied education or proper housing. No, these fellows drive the most expensive cars and use the most expensive liquor. I don’t need to get into it, but they are not the product of any social injustice. These so-called gangs have coordinated the disruption of public order, citizen security, and commercial activities. The ultimate objective of these gangs is to spread fear in the society, to weaken the state control in the society so that they can create a safe space in which they can conduct their criminal activities. They use violence and the ultimate form of violence, murder, to create this fear that brings the citizen under their control as they feel helpless because the state is unable to protect them. And the longer that the state is unable to protect those citizens in those spaces, the greater the control that the gangs will have.
If we’re going to make a change in Jamaica as it relates to the level of violence and murder that we have, we’re going to have to make a significant impact on controlling guns coming into the country and in dealing with the criminal enterprises that we euphemistically call gangs. Once we accept that the threats we face are transnational, then our responses must be equally transnational and we must embrace greater security, cooperation, and reciprocity. In some ways, we need an international corporation similar to the global war on terrorism. We need a global consensus that will create a global war on gangs that will treat with them in the same way that international effort was mobilized in creating standardized legislation across jurisdictions dealing with the finances of gangs but coordinating how exceptional and emergency powers are used to deal with these criminals who hide under the protection of being citizens of a country.
It will require an international coordinated effort. Jamaica’s gang problem is not Jamaica’s gang problem alone. Trinidad’s gang problem is not Trinidad’s gang problem alone. Haiti’s gang problem, well, that’s all our problem but Sweden has a gang problem. I’m using this conference and this platform with all the members of the international community and our partner countries who are here to be clear on what Jamaica’s position is, that now is the time for a global war on gangs.
Now, as I switch to another element of the challenge, since taking office last month, the new administration in Washington has been following through on their plan to deport criminal offenders living in the United States illegally, which includes a number of Jamaicans. Let me be clear, we respect the sovereign right of any country to determine their internal security, public order, and social policy. We encourage all our Jamaicans who live in foreign countries to follow the law of the country in which you are resident but never forget that Jamaica is your homeland. You are not homeless or stateless. What we are trying to build here is a place where every Jamaican can feel proud and comfortable to come back home; that’s what we want to build here, your homeland. And if you’re finding it difficult where you are, come back here. Ackee and saltfish was always good. It’s on the tree; you can get it. Don’t stay there and suffer. Come back home.
But as I said before, don’t come back here to destroy your homeland and what we have been working very hard to create so that you wouldn’t have had to leave in the first place. And as I said, we have been making strides in that regard so expect to be dealt with a firm hand if your intent is criminal. Come back and let us build your homeland so that you can stand up with pride with the citizens of the world about your country, that you don’t have to be economic refugees, that’s what it is about. Disabuse yourself of this notion that you can only make it through crime, and therefore, you’re going to join a gang and become a part of the problem. I appeal to all of you who have been exposed overseas and see what prosperity is like, come back home and let us work together to build the prosperous nation that Jamaica is destined to be. Don’t come back here with guns.
On that matter, I noted carefully a news report that Florida is contemplating requiring persons sending remittances to provide a higher level of identification. I haven’t verified the report, but from all accounts, it seems to be something that is being pursued. But, again, I repeat, we respect the sovereign right of any country to pursue their public order, citizen security, and social policies but it would be very useful, however, if the intention is to find criminals who are also illegal migrants to put some effort on those who are trying to send back guns to Jamaica. The remittance coming back to Jamaica is helping grandma in some remote community to survive an extra day so too is the barrel with rice but it is unfortunate when the gun is in that rice. So, if it is the objective to capture those criminals, it would be very useful to start asking for a higher level of identification for those criminals who are sending back the guns in the speaker boxes and in the bag of rice and in the box of soap powder as we call it. That would be very useful to us.
We are committed to doing our part, which requires not just strengthening our national security capabilities but also forging deeper more operationally effective regional cooperations and this is why we have been investing so heavily in our national security architecture, and I have pointed out a few of them. Since taking office in 2016, my administration tripled the capital budget for security in terms of investment in material, intelligence gathering and analytic capabilities, forensic technology, and advancing training in areas such as cybercrime investigation, counter-trafficking operations, and financial intelligence analysis.
In so doing, we have enhanced the operational capacity of the Jamaica Constabulary Force and the Jamaica Defense Force equipping them with modern tools and strategic partnerships to disrupt criminal networks at their roots. We established an entirely new operational command within the Jamaica Defense Force, the Maritime Air and Cyber Command, to enhance our capabilities and strengthen our presence across all three domains. The ability of each sovereign state to secure and maintain order within its own borders, territorial waters, airspace, and the digital sphere is not just a national concern, it is a fundamental pillar of our collective regional security. If Jamaica is safe, and our waters are safe, our neighbours are also safe.
Our willingness to cooperate with partner agencies in intelligence sharing and coordinated law enforcement is also not in doubt. In 2021, we finalized improved operational protocols pertaining to the Shiprider Agreement with the United States under which both countries cooperate to curtail illicit maritime drug trafficking. And I tell you today that we will sign the Custom Mutual Assistance Agreement which will establish a legal framework for the Jamaica Customs Agency and the US Customs and Border Protection Agency to exchange custom-related information to strengthen our capacities to safeguard our people, border and our national security and vital economic interests.
After negotiations with our US counterparts in October last year, Jamaica is now advancing the proposed agreement to the final stage of our internal approval process which includes Cabinet approval. Intelligence sharing of this sort is no longer optional if we wish to thwart transnational organized crime and secure the region. The evidence is clear, criminal organizations are outpacing our governments in their ability to share information, adapt to enforcement measures, and exploit gaps in our security frameworks. By threatening interagency cooperation, deepening partnerships with international law enforcement bodies, and ensuring our security forces are well-resourced and highly trained, we are positioning Jamaica to not only respond to crime but to proactively dismantle the networks that threaten our peace and stability.
Within the Caribbean, we must therefore accelerate the implementation of a comprehensive regional intelligence-sharing mechanism that enables real-time information exchange on the movement of arms, narcotics, and criminal actors across borders. CARICOM Impacts and the Regional Intelligence Fusion Center provide a strong foundation for such cooperation, but there is room for improvement when it comes to sharing shipping intelligence for commercial freight, which is critical to improving the detection of smuggled firearms.
On that note, we must also strengthen our maritime and border security cooperation. The movement of illegal arms and narcotics through our waters is a major enabler of violent crimes in the region. However, many of our nations lack the necessary naval and aerial surveillance capacity to effectively police our borders. And as I’ve said before, we recognize that lack, but we also recognize that we’re not going to build our economy and grow our economy and protect our people without making the sacrifice to acquire these assets on our own account.
We have done that, and you would have noticed that there is a significant increase in not just the operations of our security forces in our border and in our maritime border, but they have been very successful as well. And whereas we may not see the impact of these investments because they are way out at sea or sometimes very secretly done, but they’re having an impact and a real impact on the lives of ordinary Jamaicans.
We also recognize that there is still work to do in capacity building as the security forces must be equipped with the necessary training technology and legislative backing to combat an evolving threat. The digital revolution has transformed the ways criminals operate, utilizing encrypted communication, cryptocurrency transactions, and sophisticated cyber networks to evade detection. As such, we must modernize our law enforcement capabilities integrating advanced data analytics, cyber intelligence, and artificial intelligence-driven surveillance into our security apparatus. Investing in these areas will improve our ability to proactively disrupt criminal networks.
As we and other countries in the region continue to build up our own security architecture, we have to be minded to improve the interoperability of our security forces. This means broadening the standardized protocols for intelligence sharing, strengthening joint operations between regional militaries and law enforcement agencies, and ensuring that officers across different jurisdictions are trained in complementary tactics and procedures. We have to move towards seamless coordinating mechanisms between our national security forces, our maritime patrol units, and cyber divisions to respond rapidly and effectively to evolving threats. This is why the joint exercise event such as event Horizon 2025, was an incredible success, Chief of Defense Staff. That’s why we have been carrying out these exercises and this is a demonstration in the way in which we are becoming borderless in our security efforts.
Additionally, we must foster deeper collaboration in forensic investigation especially with respect to gun intelligence. Our commitment to regional security must be reflected in our ability to act as a unified force against crime leveraging collective resources, expertise, and technology to protect our citizens and safeguard our future. The first and perhaps most pivotal step, however, must be the formal recognition of organized criminal groups as a national security threat rather than purely criminal actors.
As the situation in Haiti, Ecuador, and even here in Jamaica demonstrates, these groups are challenges to state sovereignty. If we fail to treat these organizations with the level of seriousness they warrant, we risk allowing them to consolidate their influence and entrench instability for generations to come. To this end, Jamaica is moving towards adopting new legislation, the Enhanced Security Measures Act, that would allow for treating the most dangerous participants in armed groups, and criminal enterprises as threats to the state, as terrorists, as obtained in other jurisdictions.
The security challenge we face today is unparalleled in scope and complexity but so too are the opportunities before us. The fight against transnational organized crime requires action, investment and political will. We cannot afford to act in silos. We must align our efforts at the local, regional and global levels to dismantle the growing transnational criminal networks that exist within our respective countries. If we embrace a unified and proactive stance, one that is grounded in regional solidarity and intelligence-driven enforcement with the necessary budgetary support, we will build a safer more sustainable future for our respective nations. The time for isolated action has long passed. It is only through a shared commitment to collective security that we can safeguard our people and our sovereignty in the years to come.
As I close, I want to gloat over some good news about the success that we are having in Jamaica as a result of the diligent implementation of our comprehensive long-term Plan Secure Jamaica. As I said earlier, we have made significant investments, some of it is not public-facing. The public does not know, does not see, and does not make the connection that every shipment that we disrupt at sea means a weaker gang here in Jamaica and we have built that capacity.
In 2024, murders declined by 19% following an 8% decline in 2023. This positive trajectory has continued in January 2025 with a 16% reduction in murders relative to January 2024. In fact, between January 2022 and January 2025, we have reduced murders by 51% and January 2025 had the lowest monthly murder count since September 2014. I see the present commissioner here and the former commissioner and I must give commendations. And of course, the chief of defence staff is here and a former chief of defence staff and a former chief of defence staff is here; they must get commendation. And I’m sure they receive it on behalf of all the members of their respective forces.
Let me put it into context. The murder rate started to rise in the 90s persistently so we have had more than 30 years of persistent increases in murder but the average man experiencing crime, the historical and analytic, academic interrogation of the data is meaningless. What they want is an immediate reduction and that’s why they let governments do that but we also have to bring the public into the conversation that it was not by a flip of a switch that our murder rate got out of control, and it will not be by a flip of a switch that we’re going to get it back under control.
It got out of control; yes, ineffective government, corruption of state officials, the inability of the state to pay attention to and come to grips with the changing world in which it exists, the geopolitical changes, the emergence of narco gangs, our geographic location smack in the middle of the trade routes in this region but it was also as a result of our poor economic circumstances which everybody wants to ignore. It’s one thing to insist that every station should have a police car, we need new communication equipment, every police station should be repaired, where is the budget? Where is the economic activity that generates this budget? So the average man is disconnected from these realities, not a concern to them and so the political decisions they make is not always towards the best solution because they don’t generally hold government to account for the things that will actually make the problem solved.
What has changed in Jamaica, it’s not a new security policy. Much of what we have done was already written in policies in the Ministry of National Security for 10 years before policies were done about how to improve the security forces. When I brought on Major General Anderson as my national security advisor, he pretended like he had a lot of work to do, but that’s not quite true. We did the ZOSO and a slew of other new initiatives but much of the work was already done. We paid hundreds of thousands of US dollars to high-profile consultants and in our partnerships with our development partners quite a bit of money was spent on citizen security, but it really didn’t have that impact. What a common man needs to appreciate is that you must be able to pay for your security. Nobody’s going to give you your security and anything you get, it comes with a quid pro quo.
What has changed in Jamaica is that you have had a government for nine years which has managed the budget in such a way that generates the revenues that we can now build a 2 billion dollar new police headquarters in St Catherine, that we can implement Project Rock going around the country and improving the police stations; you can go right across Jamaica and see new police stations being built, that we have totally re uniformed the police force, not just in the spanking new authority projecting uniforms that they have, but in their gear and equipment that protects life and make them more effective. We haven’t fully solved the transportation issue, but they have far more cars than they had ever before in their history. Improved communications, all kinds of other things we’re not going to talk about but the biggest improvement that has come as a result of having a good government that runs the economy well, that generates the revenues to do the things that you want, is that for the first time the JCF is now at its establishment.
All this time, the JCF was undermanned. In other words, the police population was very low. Now, we are close to 14,000 policemen. When I just took it over, they were just hovering at somewhere at about 11,000 with a high attrition rate. In fact, more people were leaving the force than entering the force. Now, if I’m certain, if you do a survey today and you were to ask, what is the best profession today, being a member of the JCF would rank very high. These are all things that we have done. We haven’t said too much about it. We are accused as a government that keeps our light under the bushel but a time is coming now where we have to make that light very bright.
I must confess to you, that even the most jaded and biased commentator would have to say that this is the first time that any government of Jamaica can parade so many successes to an electorate or a population. It is the first time but that’s the beauty of democracy. You do your best and you leave it up to the people to decide.
God bless you and thank you.