The Caribbean Community Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (CARICOM IMPACS) will co-host the launch of a book entitled: "Challenged Sovereignty: The Impact of Drugs, Crime, Terrorism, and Cyber Threats in the Caribbean" on 25 April 2024, at the National Academy for the Performing Arts (NAPA), Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago.

The book was authored by Professor Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Guyana, a Senior Associate of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a Fellow of the Caribbean Policy Consortium and of Global Americans, based in Washington, DC, United States of America.

Other co-hosts of this initiative include the Institute of International Relations at the University of the West Indies (UWI), St. Augustine Campus, the Ministry of National Security Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean Policy Consortium.

"Challenged Sovereignty: The Impact of Drugs, Crime, Terrorism, and Cyber Threats in the Caribbean" explains the effects of today's globalised problems on the contemporary Caribbean. The book is the result of Professor Griffith's 12-year research and writing journey that offers policy-relevant analysis. It details how the manifestation of drugs, crime, terrorism, and cyber threats undermines the authority of Caribbean states and the sovereignty issues at play, with blended case studies and regional analysis.

The case studies include an examination of the State of Emergency in Trinidad and Tobago, including the country's one-time status as a center for terrorism-related activities; warring drug gangs in Jamaica, including the 'Dudus Affair'; the political resurgence of drug trafficker Desi Bouterse in Suriname, and the growing cyber threats across the region. The book explains how these multidimensional threats require solutions that address both traditional and non-traditional security and sovereignty issues.

Distinguished Professor W. Andy Knight of the University of Alberta, Canada, has described the book as a "masterpiece of description and critical analysis by renowned security scholar Ivelaw Griffith, who exposes the difficulty of governing in our complex, interdependent, interconnected, and multicentric world.

Griffith's excellent take on Challenged Sovereignty is a tour de force of the impact of problems without passports (PWPs) that skilfully blends his vast empirical knowledge of the concatenated nature of security phenomena--drugs, crimes, terrorism, and cybersecurity--with an evolving conceptual understanding of how small, subordinate and subaltern states, like those in the Caribbean, are negatively impacted by the existential threats that are the result of glocalisation."

Ms. Tonya Ayow, Deputy Executive Director, CARICOM IMPACS, will deliver remarks at the launch alongside The Honourable Fitzgerald Hinds M.P., Minister of National Security, Trinidad and Tobago, and Dr. Annita Montoute, Director (Ag.), Institute of International Relations, UWI, St. Augustine Campus.

It is expected that the launch will be attended by Senator the Honourable Nigel de Freitas, President of the Senate; The Honourable Mr. Justice Adrian Saunders, President, The Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ); high-level representatives from the Government of Trinidad and Tobago, CARICOM IMPACS, the UWI and Caribbean Policy Consortium; representatives of the diplomatic corps, international agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs); together with members of academia among other distinguished guests.