Guyana's Home Affairs Minister, Oneidge Walrond, has called on the United Nations and its international partners to increase support for technology transfer, funding and training so that smaller and developing states can keep pace with advances in policing technology. She made the appeal on Wednesday at the fifth UN Chiefs of Police Summit in New York, during a session dedicated to innovation and new technologies in policing.

The summit, held over two days, brings together UN member states to discuss emerging challenges in law enforcement and to propose ways of addressing them collectively. For Guyana, the gathering offered an opportunity to set out both its own reform agenda and the obstacles it faces in delivering it.

Walrond told delegates that Guyana's Police Force Strategic Plan 2026-2030 has placed digital transformation at the centre of its priorities. The plan covers data-driven policing, stronger intelligence capabilities and the modernisation of law enforcement infrastructure more broadly. She pointed to specific initiatives already under way, including the expansion of electronic crime reporting systems, the introduction of digital forensic tools, improvements to criminal intelligence management and efforts to strengthen cybersecurity across the force.

Despite this domestic push, Walrond acknowledged that developing countries continue to face significant constraints. She cited limited access to emerging technologies, ongoing cybersecurity vulnerabilities and a shortage of specialised training as recurring obstacles. These are not minor administrative gaps. They represent the practical limits on how far a national strategy can go without external assistance, however clearly that strategy is defined.

It was against this backdrop that Walrond issued her central request. According to her, Guyana calls for more international assistance for technology transfer, long-term financing sources, specialist training, and the creation of uniform guidelines and protections for the application of AI in law enforcement. She urged the UN Police Division and its partners to expand knowledge-sharing and technical assistance, with particular attention to Small Island developing states, arguing that collective action would be necessary to build a more resilient and effective policing system in the years ahead.

Walrond's comments extended beyond technology access alone. She said Guyana supports the creation of shared international standards for the responsible use of AI in policing, alongside the funding and transfer mechanisms already mentioned. She also stressed the value Guyana places on regional and international partnerships as tools for advancing innovation within its own police force.

On the question of security cooperation more broadly, Walrond said Guyana continues to strengthen its information-sharing mechanisms and capacity-building programmes, alongside its technological capabilities, in order to combat transnational organised crime, cybercrime and trafficking in persons. She described these as evolving security threats that no single state, however well resourced, could address in isolation.

Taken together, the minister's remarks point to a wider tension that extends well beyond Guyana's own police service. National strategies for digital and AI-enabled policing are increasingly ambitious, reflecting the pace at which the underlying technologies are developing. Yet the resources required to implement such strategies, from specialised personnel to secure infrastructure, remain unevenly distributed among UN member states. Guyana's appeal in New York was, in effect, a request that this imbalance be treated as a shared problem rather than one for individual governments to solve alone.

Whether the UN Police Division and its partners respond with the funding mechanisms and technical support Walrond described remains to be seen. What her intervention makes clear is that the gap between policy ambition and practical capacity is now a recognised feature of international discussions on policing technology, and one that smaller states are increasingly willing to raise on a global stage.