This 57-page report emerged from a 2-day meeting held in March 2008 in Kingston, Jamaica, in anticipation of both Jamaica's 2008 Peace Month (with the theme of "Peace for Prosperity") and the Global Week Of Action On Small Arms And Light Weapons (GWA), to take place in June. The purpose of the consultation was to explore the impact of the spread of violence on children, communities, and national development, as well as to identify good practices in the Caribbean and Central America that could help countries develop policies and programmes based on international frameworks, recommendations from studies, and lessons learned from various country experiences.

Compiled by the Ministry of National Security, the Violence Prevention Alliance (VPA), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the report includes a number of examples and insights gleaned from the consultation. Background remarks - and summaries of presentations from the first Session of the conference - explore the dimension of the problem of violence in the Caribbean, and the impact of small arms and light weapons (SALW) on children and adolescents. Communication strategies are highlighted in portions of the report, such as the recap of Session 2 of the consultation. This recap provides illustrations about the way that violence affects youth in this region, as expressed by a youth peace facilitator and child protection specialist from UNICEF Jamaica, who spoke on behalf of children living in volatile communities. (They had interviewed these children the previous day (Peace Day) because "[t]he children did not feel comfortable making the presentation themselves.") This particular session also featured a presentation focusing on the links between gender and SALW (e.g., intersections with notions of "masculinity").

The third session reviews - and provides links to - various international frameworks for responding to SALW. To cite only one example of a single presenter's key points, in supporting the road toward a "citizen security" approach, governments and agencies might consider how to understand local politics better, unearth the political economy of violence, support efforts to bring to light and discuss the themes, and exert international pressure on the governments to take decisive action and fulfill international agreements.

The next portion of the report features presentations on examples of "good practice" in the Central American and Caribbean region; here is a brief summary of some key communication strategies from each of the projects reviewed:

• Working in over 50 communities in Jamaica, Peace Management Initiative (PMI) fosters partnerships with community-based, national, and international organisations - in part by identifying the influential persons on each side of the conflict communities in order to build trust - as part of an effort to build early warning and intervention systems to detect and manage potential or actual violent situations in a community.
• In an effort to foster debate on human security at the local level and to educate municipalities in this area, UNDP Costa Rica has undertaken a variety of activities, which are outlined here. One such action is a national campaign with the tagline "Arms? No thank you". This campaign attempts to bring a message to the national and local levels, with a focus on involving children between the ages of 8 to 12 in peacekeeping efforts through strategies such as:
  1. Production of t-shirts, stickers, and banners;
  2. Exchange of educational kits (notebooks, pencils, stickers, and rulers) for toy guns;
  3. Public service announcements (PSAs) on television;
  4. School meetings;
  5. Parades;
  6. Symbolic establishment of "firearm-free" schools; and
  7. An educational video and paperback guide with exercises and readings focusing on the negative impact of firearms on peace, and on alternative conflict resolution.

  Amongst the lessons learned to date from this particular project: At the media level, "it is important to relate testimonies of the impact of violence, to show figures of accidents, violence between family members, murders and the impact of firearms on development opportunities. The goal is to create evidence and hard info to counter pro-gun propaganda and destroy myths. It is necessary to hold meetings with journalists to create alliances." Also, "[k]ey allies are police, teachers, public transportation drivers and churches as they are likely to be directly impacted by violence involving firearms and are therefore important agents for public education."

• The Violence Prevention Alliance (VPA) is a network of governmental and non-government organisations (NGOs) based at the University of the West Indies (UWI). Drawing on this partnership, the Alliance creates street maps where violence occurs and overlays these with a mapping of community assets. Interventions are decided upon by a multi-stakeholder committee and are multi-pronged in order to address conflict management, life-skills training, and child protection.
• Another organisation described here, Viva Rio, addresses economically poor teenagers and young males (15 to 24 years of age) that have dropped out of school before finishing elementary education. (They are, according to organisers, the main perpetrators and victims of armed violence in Brazil). Remedial education, training, citizenship classes, sports, and arts are amongst the activities designed to promote youth particiption/leadership. In addition, Viva Rio carries out advocacy campaigns. For example, in 1999 the group collected 1,312,929 signatures to support a small arms sale ban, and, in 2003, over 50,000 people were mobilised to gather in support of a new gun control law which was to be voted on by the Congress.

Session 5 charts the discussions of participants in the consultation, who were divided into four thematic groups: Building and Enforcing a Protective Legal and Policy Environment; Promoting a Culture of Peace; Child and Youth-Friendly Services for Victims and Perpetrators, and; Coordinating and Monitoring Overall Progress. The results of these working groups are summarised and presented; to point to only a few lessons gleaned from one of the working groups: "The need for training for everyone working in the area of children and adolescents...[is complemented by the] [n]eed for communication and coordination across the different groups implementing programmes in the area of children and adolescents."

Per the report, Session 6 focused on country delegation and institutions' commitments to next steps. For instance, at the country level in Jamaica, one recommendation is to make greater use of popular methods and culturally appropriate communication tools with child and human rights messages. Another key communication point to emerge in this section is the importance of strengthening networks of United Nations (UN) agencies and civil society organisations (CSOs) to press for accountability from governments on the international frameworks regarding SALW that they have signed.