 |
SPECIAL REPORTS |
| |
CENTRAL AMERICA: The World's Most Violent
Region
By José Adán Silva
MANAGUA (IPS) - Although the UNDP's
Report on Human Development in Central
America 2009-2010 says the region has the
highest rates of non-political crime in the
world, there are nevertheless plenty of
opportunities to improve public security,
analysts and experts say.
The report, titled "Abrir espacio a la
seguridad ciudadana y el desarrollo humano"
(Opening Spaces for Citizen Security and
Human Development), was released in Managua
Thursday and provides an in-depth analysis
of the impact of violence and crime on the
quality of life of people in the region.
According to the report by the United
Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 79,000
people in the region died violent deaths
between 2003 and 2008. Other estimates, like
that of Francisco Javier Bautista, a
Nicaraguan consultant for the study, put the
number of fatal victims at 120,000 between
2000 and 2009.
Economic damages due to violence and the
state's expenditure in combating it totalled
approximately 6.5 billion dollars in 2006,
equivalent to 7.7 percent of regional GDP,
which could have been invested in social
development, the report says.
With the exceptions of Costa Rica and
Panama, human and economic under-development
and poverty are the rule in Central America,
it adds.
The region has the greatest degree of
economic inequality in Latin America, as
well as ingrained gender inequality,
marginalisation and segregation of ethnic
minorities and discrimination on the grounds
of language, religion and sexual preference.
Migrants from the poorest countries, like
Nicaragua and Honduras, are stigmatised as
criminals in neighbouring countries with
higher human development indices, where they
go in search of a better life.
Organised crime is responsible for
kidnapping and sexually exploiting migrants
on their way to the United States, and for
recruiting - and arming - poor youngsters as
gang members.
The average murder rate in Central America
was 33 per 100,000 population in 2008, while
in Latin America as a whole it was 25 per
100,000, and the global average was nine per
100,000. The report says Central America has
become the region with the highest levels of
non-political violent crime in the world.
Bautista, a former chief of police, says
organised crime is the main cause of
violence in the region, and is related to
socioeconomic vulnerability.
Central America, a tapering, narrow land
bridge between North and South America, is
made up (from south to north) of Panama,
Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El
Salvador, Guatemala and Belize. It has a
total combined population of 43 million
people, 40 percent of whom are poor.
To the south it borders on Colombia, the
world's top cocaine producer, and to the
north with Mexico, where the world's most
violent drug cartels operate, according to
the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
(DEA).
Over 90 percent of the drugs produced in
South America are smuggled into the United
States through Central America and Mexico.
In 2001, 15.8 tonnes of drugs were seized in
the region, while in 2006 cocaine seizures
reached 71.8 tonnes.
Bautista told IPS that drug trafficking
incites, organises, strengthens and
increases the technological sophistication
of other forms of institutionalised crime.
The UNDP report identifies 24 illicit
activities, ranging from armed robbery to
more complex crimes like the arms trade and
trafficking in persons.
The criminal organisations that are the most
complex, sophisticated and harmful to public
security in Central America are
transnational, and drug trafficking
organisations stand out as the form of
organised crime that does the most harm in
the region today, the report says.
According to the study's authors, drug
trafficking brings in its wake five serious
threats to security: killings and other acts
of violence in turf wars over territories
and drug routes; dominance over local
consumer cartels, which leads to further
crime; encouragement of other forms of
organised crime, like hired killers;
corruption of members of the security
forces; and the diversion of large amounts
of state funding to combat the problem.
Researcher Roberto Orozco of the
non-governmental Institute for Strategic
Studies and Public Policies told IPS that
the most violent part of the region is the
north (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador).
"Organised crime is more embedded there than
in the southern part of Central America,
because Mexico is so close, as well as the
cartels that control the passage of illegal
immigrants and the cocaine routes," he said.
According to Orozco, the geographical
triangle of Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama
is subject to less open violence from
organised crime.
Murder rates in these countries in 2008 were
between 11 per 100,000 population in Costa
Rica and 19 in Panama, while in the north
the lowest rate was 48 per 100,000 in
Guatemala, and the highest was 58 in
Honduras.
Nearly three million firearms circulate in
Central America, two million of them
illegally.
According to sociologist Javier Meléndez,
who was also a consultant for the report,
major crimes like murder, robbery and rape
are identified in the study, but it also
examines less obvious crimes, such as
corruption, domestic violence and sexual
abuse.
In his view, rather than a litany of crimes
and statistics, the Human Development Report
aims to be an essential tool to get these
countries to take the problem of violence
seriously and to use it in planning a
strategy to overcome insecurity.
"While the report reflects a harsh reality,
it does offer specific tools and proposals
for integrated regional planning to mitigate
insecurity, through civic campaigns,
stronger laws, proper enforcement of
justice, coordination among institutions,
greater social equity and meeting the needs
of young people," Meléndez told IPS.
The report recommends that states in the
region should help raise the civic and
ethical values of the population,
professionalise the police, strengthen
institutions and implement special
strategies to discourage young people from
joining organised crime, by creating
opportunities for development and access to
jobs, education and sports.
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
