Barbados, February 2024
Executive Director, Freddie Woolland, and Regional Director, Kirk Harris, joined partners at the Regional Security System (RSS) Headquarters in Barbados for a full day working group in February 2024. The working group sought to broaden mutual understanding of each organisation as well as discuss new areas of collaboration with a particular focus on evolving challenges in maritime and cyber security. The working group provided an opportunity to reaffirm each organisation’s commitment to the signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and to build on earlier cooperation.
Areas of discussion included cyber security capacity building, maritime domain awareness, common operating picture, and financial and transnational crime. These are areas of concern that reverberate through the Commonwealth and represent opportunities for the exchange of ideas, leadership, training, capability development, and technology support, between the RSS and Commonwealth member states beyond the Eastern Caribbean.
Immediate outcomes of the working group saw; the CWSRG invited to attend and observe Unity Exercise as one of just five extra-regional partners alongside; RSS Head of International Engagement, Rhea Reid-Bowen, confirmed as a member of the CWSRG Board of Fellows; RSS Maritime Director Rolerick Sobers, invited to participate in June’s session of the Global Maritime Accord (GMA) academy, sharing Caribbean leadership in maritime security with a global audience; and a commitment to build on the growing relations between the two organisations including joint projects through 2025-2026.
While in-country, visits were coordinated by RSS Headquarters for the CWSRG leadership team to visit other institutions of the regional security architecture, including CARICOM IMPACS, the Coastal Zone Management Unit (CZMU) and the Integrated Coastal Surveillance System. Each of these provided valuable insight into regional efforts to counter an increasingly complex threat environment and lay the foundations for new cooperation between the wider Commonwealth community and experts throughout the Caribbean region.
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