The News Roundup is a regular section of the blog, featuring 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.
A New Campaign Against Latin America’s Epidemic of Homicide
It should come as no surprise, then, that Latin America is the most violent region in the world. Despite being home to only 8 percent of the global population, Latin America accounts for 38 percent of all homicides in the world. In the years between 2000 and 2016, more than 2.6 million human beings were killed. The violence is on a scale that only the war zones of the Middle East and Central Asia can match. And if nothing is done, the problem will only get worse. Absent concerted and determined action, by 2030, the homicide rate could increase from 21 to 35 per 100,000. But Latin America is not doomed. This open wound can be healed; the bloodflow can be stanched. If appropriate measures are taken, consistently and sustainably, there can be hope. That is the fervent belief of the nearly 30 separate organizations—from Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico—behind #InstintodeVida [site in Spanish], a new region-wide campaign devoted to homicide reduction.
Mexico accused of spying on journalists and activists using cellphone malware
When unflattering stories hit the headlines, researchers say SMS messages carrying malware links would arrive on the targets’ smartphones. Once activated, “it’s game over”, said John Scott Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab. The spyware, produced by Israel’s NSO Group, is only sold to governments, prompting researchers to conclude that the spying was state-sponsored – though they cautioned it had “no conclusive evidence attributing these messages to specific government agencies in Mexico”. The scandal prompted outrage in Mexico, where attacks on the press and activists routinely end in impunity and where six journalists have been murdered in 2017.
U.S. bid to stem Central America migration will displace more -NGOs
Speaking at a conference in Miami to re-launch the alliance last week, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said he hopes the deal will give citizens of the region the security and economic opportunity to remain in their home countries. But scholars and activists said the Alliance’s aims to cut regulation and encourage investment in infrastructure megaprojects threatens to worsen often violent displacement. Giant hydroelectric dams, luxury tourist enclaves and intercity transport links, often backed by foreign private investors, are among the major drivers of displacement in Central America, according to migrant charities. Billy Kyte, a campaign leader for rights charity Global Witness, said the Alliance’s silence on the property rights of regular people means more could be driven from ancestral homes. “At the moment the plan is a recipe for increased poverty and insecurity, and will likely cause further forced displacement,” Kyte told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
US Reverses Course in CentAm with Heavy-Handed ‘Drug War’ Approach
In this particular vision of fighting gangs, Washington has, yet again, prioritized an already failed approach, that of heavy-handed policies based merely on police intervention, which works to the detriment of strong cooperation between communities and police forces to banish gang members, as pointed out by one police force to the Trump administration in the Senate less than a month ago. Mike Pence did not leave much room for doubt: What the United States is willing to offer now is more heavy-handed policies and fewer guarantees of success in combatting the root causes of violence and crime in Central America.
Leaders of Honduras, El Salvador take TPS push to Twitter ahead of Miami visit
The Trump administration wants to talk gang violence, drug trafficking and stemming illegal migration from Central America at this week’s Conference on Prosperity and Security in Miami. But the presidents of Honduras and El Salvador have another pressing issue at the top of their agenda. Both leaders of Central America’s Northern Triangle have taken to Twitter ahead of scheduled one-on-one talks with Vice President Mike Pence in Miami on Thursday to push for Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for their nationals who have been allowed to live and work in the United States — sometimes for more than a decade — under the special humanitarian immigration status. Their strong social media offensive contrasts with the actions of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, who weighed in publicly on TPS only after pressure from U.S.-based activists, and 15 days before a May 23 decision by the Trump administration that could force the return of 58,706 Haitians as early as January.
Guatemala president under pressure over lobbying firm linked to Mike Pence
Guatemala’s president Jimmy Morales is under growing political pressure over two contracts with an Indiana lobbying firm closely linked to the US vice-president Mike Pence. Opposition politicians have called on Morales to reveal his role in the $80,000-a-month contracts signed with Barnes & Thornburg LLP, which appear to have been designed to sideline the state department and the Guatemalan foreign affairs ministry. Barnes & Thornburg – which has extensive ties with the Republican party – was hired to improve relations between the governments of Guatemala and the US, but it remains unclear who funded the contract, which was signed by politicians without the authority to intervene in foreign affairs.
Nicaragua Approves Tougher Sentences for Crimes Against Women
The new laws will increase prison terms for crimes including parricide, murder, child rape and aggravated rape. The changes also extend to higher penalties for aggravated assault; offenders will now receive a maximum of 20 years in jail. Aggravated murder sentences will be raised to 30 years and those found guilty of assaulting a minor will receive 20 to 25 year terms. Perpetrators of femicide will be sentenced 20-25 years in prison and violators of children under the age of 14 will receive a similar maximum sentence.
Haiti ex-coup leader Guy Philippe sentenced in US
The leader of a 2004 coup in Haiti that toppled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has been jailed for nine years in the United States for conspiracy to launder drug money. Guy Philippe, 49, had pleaded guilty. He was arrested earlier this year in Haiti after taking part in a live radio show and extradited to Florida. In his guilty plea, he admitted taking bribes to protect narcotics shipments to the US while he was working as a senior police officer. The US justice department said Philippe had shared some of the money that he was paid in bribes with fellow police officers, to buy their silence.
The End of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti
When the MINUSTAH troops leave this nation where they saw so many of their number die and where, intentionally or not, they themselves caused so many deaths, they leave a country where the cost of living is rising ever higher for average citizens, who lost the ability to feed themselves thanks to international agricultural policies foisted on Haiti in the 1990s and where many of the structural problems of its political reality remain unchanged. It is true that MINUSTAH likely prevented both Préval and Martelly from being ousted, a laudable feat, but the core of the malaise afflicting the Haitian state—the culture of impunity for anyone boasting political or economic influence—remains, with a judiciary as corrupt as it ever was and a police force that has become notably more Balkanized in recent years. The lives of the moun andeyo—the forgotten rural masses—have, over the last decade plus, benefited here and there from a desalination program to make salt water suitable for human consumption or the restoration of a rural road or other projects, but they remain essentially unchanged.
Colombia’s FARC rebels begin final disarmament as UN flies in top official
Colombia’s largest rebel group, the FARC, has begun the final stage of their disarmament process as agreed, in spite of major concerns over a bomb attack in the capital Bogota on Saturday, the United Nation confirmed. In a press statement, UN Colombia mission chief Jean Arnault said that the country’s oldest and largest revel group had begun its third and final stage in the disarmament process of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which began in March. UN officials have collected a total of 60% of the group’s weaponry, about 4,200 arms, in secured containers.
Scientists rescue samples of melting Bolivian glacier for posterity
A team of international scientists are transporting samples of ice from a melting glacier in Bolivia to Antarctica, for study and preservation before the glacier disappears. The international “Ice Memory” expedition of 15 scientists took samples from the glacier on Illimani Mountain in the Andes and will store them in Antarctica at the French-Italian base of Concordia. The scientists were helped by local guides and porters, who live near the base of Illimani. Clearly visible from Bolivia’s capital La Paz, Illimani’s “eternal snows” are frequently referenced in the music, mythology and literature of the Aymara people.