The News Roundup is a regular feature of the blog where we select news articles from various sources around the web, with the goal of providing an overview of the weekly conversation about the countries where MCC works in the region. Quotes in italics are drawn directly from sources and do not necessarily reflect the position of MCC.
Climate change predicted to halve coffee-growing area that supports 120m people
Extreme temperatures and unusual high-altitude rains have also sparked costly waves of pests and disease through coffee farms. In 2012, coffee leaf rust affected half of the coffee across Central America – some producers in Guatemala lost up to 85% of their crop. In 2012-13 the damage in Central America amounted to about US$500m and put 350,000 people out of work. How climate change will impact coffee growers in coming decades will vary by region. Scientists think Nicaragua could lose the majority of its coffee-growing areas by 2050, and in Tanzania, coffee yields were projected to reach “critically low levels” by 2060. By 2080, scientists think wild coffee, which is important for genetic diversity of farmed coffee, could be extinct.
Southern comfort: How a Mexican exodus from the United States began long before Trump
“A lot of young people who left Mexico are coming back with new ideas that are changing this place.” In Puebla, he earned an engineering degree for a fraction of what it would have cost in California, and found himself with a range of job options. “Because of my English and experience in the U.S., a million doors opened.” In this city, and across the country, there are tens of thousands of other returned migrants who are adapting or readapting to life in Mexico. U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump has vowed to build a wall to block the Mexican migrants he says are pouring into the U.S. But the feverish campaign rhetoric has helped to obscure a significant fact: more Mexicans are leaving the U.S. than going there. The net flow of migrants has been greater to Mexico than out of it, for several years now.
Mexico Suffers More Deaths Than War-Torn Iraq, Afghanistan
The Institute for Economics and Peace presented its Global Peace Index 2016 report this week, in which Mexico is ranked 140 out of 163 countries regarding the national state of peace. The country holds the lowest score in Central America and the Caribbean and its state of peace is characterized as low, the second worse grade on a five level classification system. Only Venezuela and Colombia are ranked lower amongst Latin American countries. The report uses a methodology based on 23 separate indicators of levels of peace pertaining to three broad categories: ongoing domestic and international conflicts, militarization, societal safety and security. Several figures underline the persistent and high-level of violence stemming mainly from the country’s war on drugs. The most striking are the 33,000 estimated deaths caused by the internal conflict in 2015, which places Mexico above Iraq’s 32,000 and Afghanistan’s 22,170 deaths. Only Syria suffered more deaths from its war than Mexico.
Amnesty: Honduras, Guatemala Deadliest Countries for Environmental Activists
An Amnesty International report released Thursday paints a picture of pervasive hostility toward environmental campaigners in both Honduras and Guatemala, calling them “the world’s deadliest countries for environmental activists” on a per-capita basis. Last year eight activists working on environmental and territory issues were killed in Honduras, and 10 were killed in Guatemala. According to the NGO, so-called “precautionary measures” afforded to activists like Cáceres often fail miserably to make any progress in limiting harassment and intimidation.
Nim Ajpu: Indigenous Lawyers who are Changing the Face of Guatemala
In addition to litigation, Nim Ajpu works on political incidence, research, and training. The Maya lawyers also challenge new laws presented in Congress and discuss policy in media venues. They play a crucial role in shaping ideas, whether it is by contesting government attempts to regulate prior consultation (2012) or to pass laws privatizing corn seeds (2015). They train judges in legal pluralism, familiarizing them with Indigenous concepts of law and justice. They teach university students, including at the Maya University. And every December, Nim Ajpu organizes a two-day congress that brings together about 70 Indigenous lawyers to brainstorm current challenges. Most cases tackle self-determination, whether it is to recover lands stolen by the state or to establish the authority of indigenous systems of justice. Dozens of cases have already set important precedents for Indigenous Peoples in Guatemala.
Why Is Nicaragua 7 Times Less Violent Than Honduras?
Police reform is undoubtedly a key element to Nicaragua‘s security success relative to its neighbors like Honduras. And building off the police reform commission’s achievements thus far in Honduras will be vital if the authorities hope to clean up a force that has long been plagued by corruption. But El Heraldo’s narrow focus on police reform underestimates the role of criminal actors in influencing homicide rates. Criminal pacts in El Salvador and Colombia have shownthat agreements between key underworld players can have as big or bigger an impact on insecurity than any government strategy. In other words, effective policing is only one side of the story. The violent street gangs and drug trafficking organizations that pervade Honduras are largely absent in Nicaragua. To understand the contrasting security fortunes in Nicaragua and Honduras, the criminal disparity must be considered alongside the disparity in the quality of the two countries’ police forces.
Haiti’s peanut producers oppose 500-tonne US donation
“We don’t modify our crops. We will not accept anyone or any institution that tries to destroy them. We will fight. Peanuts are part of our heritage.” More than 50 groups of farmers and aid workers, both Haitian and foreign, have issued a joint statement calling on the US to stop the shipment. “The dumping of these peanuts will create a big catastrophe, even bigger than the destruction of our rice production,” said Jean Pierre Ricot, an agriculture expert. “Hundreds of thousands of families lost their livelihoods because of those policies. To face the problem, we need a fundamental battle to stop these policies.” Some international aid experts warn that the US peanut donation could eventually become another cautionary tale about humanitarian aid from a wealthy nation that undermines a flimsy economy in a poor one.
Q&A: Colombia Peace Deal Announced — What’s Next?
Why might Colombians reject the accord? While Colombians overwhelmingly support peace, polls show deep polarization over the accords themselves. Most controversial are parts of the special justice system to be used in the transition. The international community has largely embraced the agreements as striking a reasonable balance for all sides, addressing root causes of the conflict; victims’ rights to truth, justice, reparations and non-repetition of the conflict; and the government’s obligation to investigate, prosecute and punish violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. Part of the problem is that Santos, who has staked his presidency on ending the war, is unpopular at home, primarily for his handling of the economy. He also faces powerful opponents to the deal in former President Alvaro Uribe, who calls the accord an agreement with terrorism, and Comptroller General Alejandro Ordóñez, who has challenged the agreement’s legality. It will be unfortunate if the plebiscite becomes a political referendum on Santos rather than a vote to move out of the shadows of war.
The three Rs: How Bolivia combats illiteracy
Their group is part of the “Yes, I can” adult literacy campaign which was launched in Bolivia 10 years ago. Most of the students are women over the age of 50 from a poor, rural background. Officials say that it is thanks to the “Yes, I can” programme that illiteracy rates dropped from 13.28% in 2001 to 3.8% in 2014, when the last census was conducted. This means that Bolivia is now among the countries considered to have eradicated illiteracy by Unesco’s standards, which requires countries to maintain a rate of illiteracy of below 4%.