This picture was taken in small-town Florida. The streets here in Kingston are quiet as it seems most people have gone country for the long weekend. Enjoy your day.

Yesterday I wrote about the United Nations’ report on global homicide rates. Specific to Jamaica, the report found a 35 per cent decrease in murders since 2009. This is good news, taken at face value. However, as a reader pointed out, this rate does not reflect “extra-judicial” killings. Nor does it reflect unreported deaths or missing people.

But back to “extrajudicial killings”. INDECOM (the body that investigates deaths involving authorities) calls them, “security-forces” related deaths. Let’s do away with the euphemisms.

These are deaths, usually by firearm, that involve the Jamaica Defence Force or the Jamaica Constabulary Forces. For many years, there have been allegations of rogue security forces. (Check out my post on “death squads” here.) There are two separate issues here: one is the allegations of policemen and women who kill criminals for reasons other than self-defence, and two is the issue of using lethal force when it may not be required. In other words, the accusation goes, authorities are abusing their authority with the result being lives lost unnecessarily and without the presumption of innocence and the requisite right to a fair trial.

Such an atmosphere, where corrupt police allegedly abuse their authority, is obviously a major problem and a symptom of a severely unhealthy democracy. One could even argue that this, combined with other factors such as requiring financial bailouts from an international body such as the IMF, could constitute a failed state. There is no official, internationally agreed-upon definition of failed state, and I wouldn’t go that far, but corrupt security forces and unhealthy finances are two symptoms that require immediate attention in terms of staving off the breakdown of the state.

But back to a story being reported by RJR News today. INDECOM is reporting a 47.3 per cent decrease in “security-forces related” deaths so far this year. From the story:

In January 2014 the Commission recorded 22 fatalities, down from the 30 recorded in January last year. This represents a 26.6 per cent decrease; while in February 14 fatalities were recorded, down from 27 in 2013 which is a 48.1 per cent decrease.

For the month of March, the Commission record four fatalities, which it says is the lowest in the history of the Commission. Last year 19 fatalities were recorded in March, which means there has been a 78.9 per cent drop from the figure recorded in March 2013.

“We are certainly encouraged by these figures and we hope that the number will continue on a downward trajectory, going forward. It is particularly refreshing given the report of the general decline in crime during this period,” said Commissioner of INDECOM Terrence Williams said.

Here are the total number of deaths, annually, from the story: NDECOM statistics reveal that, for the past three years, the annual figures for fatalities were as follows: 2011 – 210; 2012 – 219; 2013 – 258.

Any decrease is good news. But in context and in reality, any death by firearm involving a state institution required to protect its citizens is too many. The flipside of this coin, however, is of course that criminals are out of control and that security forces must protect themselves and their colleagues’ lives. It is a complex situation involving many social factors, and hopefully this positive trend will continue.

(This report from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights provides more background and characterizes the situation better than I can.)

437,000 human beings were killed by a fellow human being in 2012, according to the United Nations Global Study on Homicide 2013.

Of these homicides, 37 per cent occurred in the Americas. Of the top ten countries with the highest homicide rates, Jamaica ranks 6th at 39.3 per 100,000 people, which is an improvement from 3rd place a couple of years ago. The decrease in Jamaica is being attributed to successful initiative by the authorities to curb the drug trade.

But before I dig into the numbers, I point you to some interesting language in the preamble to the extensive report. Homicide is defined as “unlawful death purposefully inflicted on a person by another person.” The report also notes that most nations, and the United Nations, enshrine in law the right to life. There are also three main “typologies” of homicide: that which is related to criminal activities, that which attempts to resolve a conflict, and that which attempts to advance a social or political agenda. With this foundation set, let’s dig a little into the report.

The global average homicide rate stands at 6.2 per 100,000 population, but Southern Africa and Central America have rates over four times higher than that (above 24 victims per 100,000 popula- tion), making them the sub-regions with the high- est homicide rates on record, followed by South America, Middle Africa and the Caribbean
(between 16 and 23 homicides per 100,000 popu- lation). Meanwhile, with rates some five times lower than the global average, Eastern Asia, South- ern Europe and Western Europe are the sub- regions with the lowest homicide levels.

Going beyond the averages, what strikes me is the fact that 79 per cent of all homicide victims in 2012 were male. Within the domestic context, 43,600 victims were female. Also striking is the youth of the majority of victims: close to half are within the 15-29 age group, while just less than a third are in the 30-44 age group. So basically, young men are killing one another at rates exceeding those for any other scenario.

If you include the under 15 age groups, close to 50 per cent of all homicide victims are under 30. And in the Americas, 30 per cent of all homicides can be traced to organized criminal activity, and of these, 66 per cent are caused by firearms.

Specific to the region, the report goes on to say

…in El Salvador, Honduras and Jamaica,the male homicide rate in the 30-44 age group is higher than in the 15-29 age group and while the number of victims is greater in the 15-29 male age group, the rate indicates that the homicide risk for males aged 30-44 is higher. In Honduras, this means that almost 1 in every 280 males in the 30-44 age group falls victim to intentional homicide every year, compared to 1 in 360 males aged 15-29. The impact of this dynamic can be devastating for security and the economy, as the deaths of males in the older of the two age groups can have a disproportionate impact on families, the working population and perceptions of security.

The global homicide rate is in fact decreasing, but not in the Caribbean and South American region overall, although it is heartening to see that Jamaica’s homicide rate has decreased by 35 per cent since 2009.

Over the last 12 years, the Caribbean has experienced an increase in its homicide rate, whose fluctuations are also linked to changes in drug trafficking patterns and gang violence. Much of the high rate in these sub-regions can be attributed to very high rates of homicide in the “Northern Triangle” (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras), as well as in Jamaica.

However, it appears that authorities are still facing challenges when it comes to curbing organized criminal activity, as 44 per cent of all homicides in Jamaica from 2008 to 2011 are caused by this phenomenon.

Overall, the report reveals some encouraging trends, even in Jamaica. A decrease in the murder rate (there have been more than 1,000 murders in Jamaica annually for the past few years) is good news, and important news that deserves attention and further scrutiny. I’m not sure why local media have not devoted more time and energy to this story. Even the government could use it is as a PR exercise. Maybe in the next few days we shall see more about this.

Too many children are suffering in silence. A recent survey from the Office of the Children’s Registry and Unicef reveals that only one in 10 Jamaicans report suspected cases of child abuse.

The survey found that while 76 percent of professionals who work closely with children have reported cases of abuse, only 30 percent of children and 11 percent of adults interviewed, have ever made reports. This is despite the fact that most of the persons surveyed claimed to have either experienced abuse, or knew of a child who has been abused in the past three months.

Additionally, the latest OCR statistics released last week,indicated a jump of close to 40 percent in reports of abuse between January and June 2012-2013.

The Office of the Children’s Registry exists to receive reports of child abuse and/or neglect. Here is their full mandate. Last summer, I used their online reporting system to report a missing child. It was surprisingly easy and a representative from the OCR got in touch with me almost right away. If you suspect a case of child abuse and/or neglect in Jamaica, I strongly urge you to visit and use this easy reporting system. It is free and confidential and you may be contributing to protecting the well-being of a child.

Birthday celebrations last night. The cakes were home-made, one chocolate and one vanilla, with the inside coloured red, green and yellow. And it said “One love”. Enough said. Enjoy your day.

Friday fruit from a friend. Plantain, banana, tahiti apple, regular apple and naseberry. Enjoy your day.

“This is an idea whose time has come,” says Mrs. Shirley Hanna, Executive Director of Nice Time Productions Limited, a Jamaican independent film company. Mrs. Hanna is aiming for no less than a shift in the paradigm of how the world perceives children and their rights and protection, much like the shift in mentality that occurred with slavery.

In wars, revolutions, famines and floods and other disasters, children and women are always the ones who suffer the most, as they are the most vulnerable. So Mrs. Hanna and the Women of the World Coalition are launching an ambitious project: a documentary called Voices of the Children.

“I’ve been travelling and thinking about this concept for quite awhile,” Mrs. Hanna says, “talking about the atrocities on children as an idea whose time has come…We want to get children to speak about the atrocities they’ve experienced…We need to take the bandaid off and go to the source.”

Too often, children’s voices go unheard in disasters and conflicts, and Mrs. Hanna, whose daughter is Jamaican Youth and Culture Minister Lisa Hanna, is determined to produce a documentary of children telling their stories, in their own voices. She was alerted to this phenomenon of a lack of rights and a voice by daughter Lisa, when she came to her as a five-year-old, asking why 75 per cent of the world’s population who died from hunger were children. “She told me that the adults weren’t doing a very good job.”

Children are the most vulnerable, says Mrs. Hanna, and it is time for them to have a voice. The documentary is at the proposal stage and the Coalition is seeking funding. Mrs. Hanna will employ Nice Time Productions to film it.

Nice Time has already produced some of the nation’s most well-known documentaries, which often incorporate a socially conscious narrative. The most recent is Songs of Redemption, an award-winning documentary produced by Fernando Garcia-Guereta about the power of music programs in federal penitentiaries to rehabilitate inmates. The documentary has recently been approved by the Ministry of Education to be shown in schools and has also aired at dozens of international film festivals.

Mrs. Hanna’s background includes a range of disciplines, including communications, public relations, event planning and marketing. In 1990, she lead the World Hunger Project and was a volunteer with the inaugural Meet the People program launched by the Jamaica Tourist Board. Mrs. Hanna was also active in her daughter’s life as past president of the Queen High School for Girls Parent-Teacher Association.

For this upcoming project, Mrs. Hanna intends to travel the world, recording children’s voices and aiming to no less than change the global mentality when it comes to how young people are perceived. “By the end of the century, we want atrocities ended.”

Trade talks between Canada and CARICOM countries are proceeding, which is good news considering the final deadline (last December) was extended until this June. A source has told me they are not going well, but officials seem to be putting a good spin on it. Read a solid article about it here.

The problem seems to be aid, with Canada shying away from giving untied, direct development funds, instead opting for economic development-based funding. This is in line with the rest of most “developed” industrial nations, but Canada is taking an aggressive, unforgiving stance on this, it seems.

Here’s an excerpt from the story:

“The [CARICOM]/Canada trade negotiations are now at a critical stage,” the press release said.

“Should these negotiations falter, [CARICOM] countries would, potentially, face the prospect of trading with Canada on very different terms, including the possibility of having to compete in the Canadian market on WTO global terms,” the release said.

Both sides “know what a deal looks like,” but both are also having trouble finding the political will to close it, and for different reasons, said Phil Rourke, executive director of Ottawa’s Centre for Trade Policy and Law, in a phone interview.

Finding political will to go beyond June is unlikely at this point, he said. “This is basically crunch time.”

And another, addressing the aid issue:

Aid is another sticking point. CARICOM negotiators have asked that Canada include a commitment to providing their members with development funding as part of the deal, something Canada has balked at.

The Canadian government “wants to move beyond” including aid in the deal, Conservative member of Parliament Joe Daniel was quoted as saying in an April 2 press release from the Canada-CARICOM Parliamentary Friendship Group.

The EU-CARIFORUM deal included a commitment for “financial support.” However, a summary of that deal by the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that “[w]hile it is exceptional that CARIFORUM negotiators were able to weave development in core chapters in the EPA Agreement, many of the references do not bind the EU by a time-table for implementation.

“Thus, this leaves a great window of opportunity for the European Council to decide what to support, when and how much to inject into CARIFORUM economies without any legal recourse available for CARIFORUM countries to refute,” the summary said.

Mr. Rourke said he believed the two sides have “figured out a solution” to the issue of development funding in the deal. “You can find language that is acceptable to both sides.”

Canada’s Foreign Affairs webpage states: “Canada is committed to negotiating a modern trade agreement with CARICOM that will take into account differing levels of development, vulnerabilities associated with island states, and trade-related capacity challenges.”

For many of us, when we score a job interview, the first thing we do is begin to research the company and prepare answers to potential questions. This is a luxury for some people, however, as they must first think about what they will wear.

Dress for Success is an international non-profit organization that provides workplace-appropriate clothes for women who don’t have any. “When we look the part, it makes us feel so much better,” says Minette Bryan of Jamaica’s chapter of Dress for Success. Ms. Bryan, along with colleague Nadine Chambers, presented their mission to the Canadian Women’s Club this morning in a bid for support for their fledgling organization.

Jamaica’s chapter is the first in the Caribbean and joins about 135 other countries that already provide this service. Essentially, Dress for Success outfits women who may just be entering the workforce or who may have left and need to rejoin but lack the resources to do so. In addition to suits and accessories, Dress for Success in Jamaica has started to offer workshops on topics such as life skills, as well as a Career Development Center.

The target age group is 18-60 and in 2013 alone, Dress for Success provided over 150 women with an outfit and already this year, more than 50 women have received support. “We want to empower women,” Bryan said. The Jamaican chapter was started in 2008 and is quickly gaining steam, with more than 50 volunteers engaged, who provide mentorship and advice to women who are referred by university career centers, crisis centers, vocational training facilities and the Women Foundation of Jamaica. “We prepare them for the work world,” said Nadine Chambers, who works almost full-time for Dress for Success, in addition to her full-time career.

The last career training session welcomed 31 women and five men (while Dress for Success does not officially cater to men, they will not turn them away).

Officially, their mission is to “promote the economic independence of disadvantaged women by providing them with: professional attire; a support network and career development tools. We promote the economic empowerment of women ages 18-60 so they can thrive in their careers and in life.”

According to Dress for Success, some clients are single mothers who are raising two or three children. In addition, 80 per cent are college or university graduates who cannot afford a suit (most live under the poverty line) and range in age from 18-38.

This kind of service highlights that which many of us take for granted everyday: that we send out a resume, get a call for a job interview, do our research, put on our best suit and then find our way to the right place at the right time.

If you want to donate cash or clothing, you can call them at 876-547-4356 or find them on Facebook.

There are many ways a country can measure the well-being of its citizens. Gross Domestic Product is often a benchmark economists, politicians and lawmakers use to measure health, happiness and prosperity. The United Nations Millennium Development Goals are perhaps the best known and most adhered to internationally.

However, many of these means of measurement come under fire from people who say they do not take into account too many crucial factors. As a result, when governments and civil society organizations attempt to target the most needy, they start from a skewed and faulty foundation, as the data is not accurate. Such is the argument. (Check out this interactive graphic from the Guardian that does a good job of explaining the MDGs, their successes and shortcomings).

In any case, my attention was captured by a relatively new organization that has created the Social Progress Index. Their premise is that economic indicators are insufficient to measure social progress. In other words, economists fail to take into account many indicators that can measure how healthy and happy people are.

From their website:

Social progress is defined as the capacity of a society to meet the basic human needs of its citizens, establish the building blocks that allow citizens and communities to enhance and sustain the quality of their lives, and create the conditions for all individuals to reach their full potential.

The Social Progress Index is a tool that we hope will be widely used to inform and influence policies and institutions around the world. The Index is founded on the principle that what we measure guides the choices we make. By measuring the things that really matter to people — their basic needs, their food, shelter and security; their access to healthcare, education, and a healthy environment; their opportunity to improve their live — the Social Progress Index is an attempt to reshape the debate about development.

The Social Progress Index was incorporated as a non-profit in 2012 and seems to have involved a Harvard Business School professor, an Economist bureau chief and funding from the Skoll Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, among other notable names and organizations.

And here are the indicators they measure:

Basic Human Needs
Nutrition and Basic Medical Care
Water and Sanitation
Shelter
Personal Safety
Foundations of Wellbeing
Access to Basic Knowledge
Access to Information and Communications
Health and Wellness
Ecosystem Sustainability
Opportunity
Personal Rights
Personal Freedom and Choice
Tolerance and Inclusion
Access to Advanced Education

So how does Jamaica fare? Surprisingly, Jamaica does well when it comes to providing Nutrition and Basic Medical Care, Access to Basic Information and Personal Rights. (I am not sure I agree with those, from my experience, and would be interested to know what kind of on-the-ground research occurred.)

Also not surprisingly, Jamaica can improve on ensuring Personal Safety, Ecosystem Sustainability and providing Access to Advanced Education.

Below are some other stats, ranking Jamaica in comparison to 131 other countries. The social progress index is a score out of 100, and if you want to know more about their methodology, check it out here. What struck me is the assurance that the index excludes economic indicators and measures what matters in the lives of real people, to use their terminology. But here is more about how Jamaica fared:

Social Progress Index 70.39 (43rd)
Basic Human Needs 69.23 (76th)
Foundations of Wellbeing 76.34 (31st)
Opportunity 65.60 (30th)

Population (2011) 2,712,100 (118th)
GDP (PPP) $ 7,083 (73rd)

For the record, the top three countries are New Zealand, Switzerland and Iceland, while Chad is the worst. I suggest you take a look at the dataset, it is very interesting and offers a new way to measure progress and well-being.