France to improve law enforcement cooperation with Suriname
The French government have pledged 400,000 euros over the next four years to improve Suriname’s law-enforcement initiatives and advance cooperation in the fight against crime, French Ambassador Richard Barbeyron said during an anti-drugs and money-laundering seminar in Paramaribo. Suriname and the French overseas department, French Guiana, share the Marowijne River as border, while illegal activities such as smuggling of goods, drug trafficking and illegal small-scale gold mining is rampant in the border area. Law enforcement in the area so far has no strong effect since illegal miners flee to French-Guiana and vice versa when authorities of both countries clamp down on their activities. Closer cooperation between law enforcement agencies of the two nations is the only solution for the problems, Barbeyron told journalists. According to the diplomat Suriname is an important partner for France in its fight against transnational crime.
In 2001 Suriname’s justice minister Chandrikapersad Santokhi signed an agreement with then Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy to allow cross-border operation within a two kilometers area into each others space to chase criminals, but the Suriname government has yet to sanction the agreement because of parliamentary opposition.
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