KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, CMC -As the Fourth Regional Workshop on Negotiations for the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty opened on Wednesday, Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves used the case of a Vincentian woman paralysed by a bullet to highlight the impact of years of unregulated trade in weapons.
“With that single bullet, this young lady went from being a star athlete at her school to a wheelchair-bound symbol of the creeping scourge of arms and ammunition into the most remote corners of our Caribbean civilization,” Gonsalves said.
Sweet-I Robertson, 20, a resident of Chateaubelair, a town on St. Vincent’s northwestern coast, was shot in the neck in October 2010 during an altercation between some young men. As a result she is now paralysed from the neck down, with only limited use of one arm.