On The Map: Crime, violence No.1 concern for CARICOM youth

March 16, 2010

Crime, violence No.1 concern for CARICOM youth

Published on: 3/16/2010.

CRIME AND VIOLENCE have been identified as the No.1 concern among adolescents and youth in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), according to a report from the CARICOM Commission on Youth Development.

This matter was associated with poverty, unemployment, politics and social inequities.

The commission, which was co-chaired by Jamaican academic Professor Barry Chevannes and Suriname's Yildiz Beighle, has been conducting research on youth in Caribbean with the view of presenting recommendations on advancing youth development in the region since March 2007.

"Constant exposure to crime and violence leads to emotional blunting, high stress, grief and a sense of loss," the report read.

The report stated that young people across the region spoke of fear, perceptions of lack of safety and concern for their general well-being as a result of the increased crime and violence. It also stated that violence caused among youth self-imposed curfews, diminished participation in community activities, restriction of night-time activities and changes in social practices.

The report stated that among males aged 15-24, homicides at 19.8 per cent was the leading cause of death, followed by HIV/AIDS, 13.6 per cent, and motor vehicle accidents at 9.2 per cent.

Health and well-being was also listed as another issue. Youths were concerned about the limited access to hospitals/clinics, medical personnel and health care, particularly for HIV/AIDS.

The report also said long waiting periods in emergency rooms and lack of confidentiality were issues young people complained about.

The document also found that youth policies across the region were weak, outdated and rarely implemented, and called for CARICOM to invest more in youth.

The report also recommended that CARICOM member states deepen the democratic culture by including youth in the processes. Specifically, the report called for a democratically elected youth representative entity to be established so that it can become the central national institutional body for development.

(Jamaica Gleaner)

No comments:

Post a Comment

ORDER YOUR OWN COPY OF ON THE MAP

Email annalee@annaleedavis.com to order your copy of ON THE MAP.
We accept cheques or International postal orders included with your complete return mailing address and sent to Annalee Davis. Email Annalee for the mailing address.

You may also contact Annalee to schedule a screening at your school, university, artists' collective or gallery, community group, library, place of worship, private sector entity or government department. This can include a Panel Session which allows the issues raised by the film to be constructively discussed with the Director, invited Pannellists and the audience.

Statement

The Caribbean was the cradle of New World globalization. Our people all came from somewhere else, into the belly of the Americas.

Characterised by waves of migrant experience, the Caribbean became a place of confluence, transience and hybridity which for years romanticized the struggle to be whole, to become one Caribbean people. In spite of this ideal, we remain as fragmented as ever, locked into nationalist crevices, linguistic divides and exclusivist cultural legitimacy.

The repeated production of idyllic images of an eternal playground for tourists on the one hand, and notions of the region as fragmented, failed and chaotic on the other; mask a complex history, leaving Caribbeans ambivalent about a sense of self.

We must answer the question, both creatively and critically, what is the Caribbean? What image of ourselves do we wear and to what extent do these images represent who we actually are? What is the truth of our own lived realities and how do we speak to each other of this reality?

The challenge is to remove the mask created by the visitors’ gaze, to see through the rigid stereotypes, and to honestly reflect on our states of being.

My work exposes tensions within the larger context of a post-colonial history and the more recent experiences of post independence and 9/11. More personal explorations of home/land, longing and belonging, and creoleness, serve as cartographic meanderings of Caribbean space, and investigations of the self within that space; in an effort to discern the territory.

September 9 2007
St. George, Barbados

(complete text)

I am the complex Creole
My context is the Caribbean

An archipelago crocheted into a crossbreed
Of carnival, class and comess
Cognizant of Columbus
And the Commonwealth
That created these confused colonies
Correctly criticized for the callous treatment
Of the Amerindian
And the reconstitution
Of a Caribbean caste system

Several centuries later
My coronary artery crackles
When I think of the creatures
That created this cacophonous confusion

And although we collide
There is more chaos than community
Some feel like foreigners
As though uncharacteristic
Of these now ex-colonies
Our natural native islands

I celebrate the chorus of the Creole Chant

But I have a creed that I wear
Like a crest on my chest
My credentials are that I am created equally
Credible from my cranium to my coccyx

I cleave to no church, temple nor country
I sing the canticles
And practice a yoga
I chant
I breathe
I made my jappa and wrote a creed
I owned a crucifix
And acknowledge the crescent

I anoint myself with a communion of
Cinnamon, coffee and cumin
Cocoa, cotton and cane
It is with composure and compassion that
I conceive my compatriots as compatible
Whether Cuban or Guyanese,
Christian or Muslim, Hindu or Jew

I contemplate a Caribbean conservatory
That is a consanguineous conscious community
Confidently confirming a conglomerate
Who speak patois, Papiamento, Spanish and Creole

I celebrate the chorus of the Creole Chant

As a complex Creole
Confronting this crossroads of centuries
I cannot condone the corruption
Nor those who configure the conflict –
I outcast them from community

I contradict the unicursal way
And commemorate the cobweb we have become
I come to you
Not as a comedian
Nor as a clown
I come to you as a coalition
Of combustible matter
A civilized collective
Sometimes caustic, but never counterfeit
I am a cordless creator of culture
Conveying my codes
To a community that isn’t convinced
Of the credit of cultural producers

And now I wear coronet
A continuous circular

In my cipher
I chuckle
I weep

I celebrate the chorus of the Creole chant

March 16, 2010

Crime, violence No.1 concern for CARICOM youth

No comments:

VISIT MY WEBSITE

ORDER YOUR OWN COPY OF ON THE MAP

Podcast at the Brooklyn Museum

Annalee Davis

Statement

Creole Chant

(complete text)

Related Links

curriculum vitae

Visits

Archive