Following is the second and final part of a discussion on the Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism (MEM), with Assistant Commissioner Errol S. Strong, up to recently Senior Security Attache, Jamaican Embassy, Washington, D.C., and newly-appointed head of the Narcotics Division of the Jamaica Constabulary.
The MEM, of the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD), a specialised agency of the Organisation of American States, measures the progress of anti-drug efforts taken by the 34 members of the OAS, country-by-country, to combat the global drug problem and related crimes, and to provide the balance found lacking in the United States' certification programme.
Part 1 appeared on Tuesday.
"WE HAVE found the responses to the indicators by the different countries to be helpful in the way they answer some of the questions. We also respect that there are certain peculiarities in each country and that as so-called experts we do not know enough about each and every country so, sometimes we have to go to the real experts in each country, the real specialists, called the National Co-ordinating Entity. Each country has a National Co-ordinating Entity. The Ministry of National Security in Jamaica is the entity. Mr. Smith would have experts from health, Dr. (Charles) Thesiger (consultant psychiatrist), and others; people from the justice side in terms of the legislative framework and regulatory bodies; help from the Director of Public Prosecution's Office; Michael Tucker (executive director) and others from the National Council for Drug Abuse.
"One of the assumptions that end process and the GEG makes is that the country that reports is factual. We have sometimes to assess not only accuracy but also the adequacy of the individual country's report and in so doing, we seek to identify on a comparative basis, the exact situation in each country. Ultimately, the GEG is able to sort of take advantage of the lessons learnt from all the countries, and usually we share these lessons among the countries. And we do make recommendations..."
Some of the recommendations sometimes go right across the board to maybe 50 per cent to 60 per cent of the countries.
EMERGING ARCHITECTURE
ACP Strong describes the MEM process as "an emerging architecture at this stage, and even after five or six years we still are going through the birthing process. If you look at the latest reports you will find that some countries don't have a strategic plan. The vast majority now have in fact developed a strategic plan to deal with the problems.
"During the third Round, 2002-4, we have also introduced some additional indicators about national organised crime, and that sort of thing. It's new and we are looking at new trends in the drug phenomenon that are coming on stream."
He said that some people living in some of the more depressed societies, Jamaica included, and Central and South America, were living on the residue of the
fertility of the forests. In South America and parts of Jamaica and in many countries, poor, rural people were vulnerable. They were living on the poverty line; inner-city people, for instance, became "not the enemies of the state but they are really allies of the drug traffickers and producers." For there clearly are, in many instances, economic incentives and they go there. They can do some fairly simple things and we do recommend, in some instances, to government, to provide some of those little things that will keep poor rural people as well as the city people, as their friends.
"The GEG does make very strong recommendations; we don't impose any sanctions like the American system does, but we do make specific recommendations and we do make fairly pointed conclusions."
CHALLENGE
Referring to the latest NEM evaluation, ACP Strong said, "We are processing all the data it's a mountain of paper we cut down several thousand pages to about 300 pages, we distill the whole thing. In the process we have to sometimes recompose ourselves. It is always a tremendous challenge in terms of the volume that we have to consume. You can think of the indicators from places like the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil big countries with a lot of activity, but we in the GEG have set up a sophisticated mechanism to assess what is happening and it has worked. And to arrive at what we think is a technical opinion on the state of affairs in each country. So, America gets recommendations from us, like Canada, like Haiti, like Suriname, like all the other countries.
"And from time to time after we complete our preliminary evaluation we prepare what we call a preliminary draft report. It goes to each country and we request the country to provide additional information or to clarify aspects of what they have said and sometimes we refine our draft report, depending on what the country return to us, and we work our way towards what we call final recommendations and conclusions. We always do what we can and everything that we can that is necessary so as not to prejudice the integrity of the final report on the country. It is always our aspiration that whatever comments and recommendation we make to a country, they are factual."
THERAPEUTIC
ACP Strong observed that Argentina had some excellent therapeutic communities in terms of demand reduction. "Colombia, Peru and Bolivia are doing a lot of things now in terms of alternative development; Mexico is also doing a whole lot in that area. Canada and the United States have done excellent work in terms of surveys to really say who are the target population, what percentage of the people, and at what age group, what drugs, what is the trend like. So it is really a learning process that we hope to share with the countries across the hemisphere and, hopefully, as we all come up to speed with the various legislative framework and regulatory framework and laws and legislation not only for the drugs but the guns and the pharmaceuticals and the other chemical products and precursors and money laundering and organized crime, you tie it all together in terms of co-operation and collaboration, not only within each country and agencies within each country but also with their counterparts in the region to tighten the whole thing. That's really the thrust, that's really where it is going."
ACP Strong is of the view that Jamaica has certainly benefited from the Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism "not only from my own personal involvement there but the country itself is encouraged to use systems that have been adopted in other countries and that have worked. Each country has the ability to look across the board; that's why we make these recommendations. Jamaica did very well in fulfilling some three or four of the recommendations that were made to us. Others are in the process of being fufilled. No country has really implemented all the recommendations made to them over the past six years not even the United States."
AMENDMENTS
ACP strong pointed out that some of the recommendations require countries to make legislative amendments and regulatory changes "and that's a process that can take many years to go though the system. So it's not that the country is not working and is not working dilligently in that direction, it's just that it is time-sensitive and it will take a number of years before it can be adapted."
But the MEM is not only a diagnostic tool, but an instrument to stimulate action and also, it channels assistance to areas requiring greater attention by optimising resources.
According to the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission, the MEM has gained the respect and recognition of member-states in diagnosing the degree of progress made in national anti-drug policies implemented in OAS member-states.
Many countries prefer the MEM's multilateral approach to certification to the unilateral system practised by the U.S. Under that process U.S. law requires the President to "certify" to Congress by March 1 each year, whether the governments of major drug-producing and drug-transit countries had "failed demonstrably... to make substantial efforts" during the previous 12 months to adhere to international counternarcotics agreements and to take certain counternarcotics measures set forth in U.S. law.
U.S. assistance may not be provided to any country designated as having "failed demonstrably", unless the President determines that the provision of such assistance is vital to U.S. national interest, or that the country, at any time after the President's initial report to Congress, has made "substantial efforts" to comply with the counternarcotics conditions in the legislation. This prohibition does not affect humanitarian, counternarcotics, and certain other types of assistance that are authorised to be provided notwithstanding any other provision of law.
TRANSNATIONAL
The Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission, describes the Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism, thus:
"The MEM came into being as a result of the recognition by the countries of the hemisphere that the complex and transnational nature of the drug problem requires a comprehensive and balanced response by them, acting in concert under the principle of shared responsibility. The overall objective of the MEM process is to stimulate responses in all aspects of the worldwide fight against illicit drugs in all the countries of the Americas taking into account the different ways in which the drug problem manifests himself in each. The MEM pursues this goal by means of annual national and hemispheric evaluations that measure the counter-drug progress achieved by the 34 individual CICAD member-states and by the hemisphere as a whole. Through this peer review process, which looks at institutional capacity, demand and supply reduction efforts and applied control measures, member-states learn of the strengths and weaknesses of their anti-drug programmes, and are encouraged to correct deficiencies identified, seeking assistance from other members of CICAD as needed."
