Colombia. Anna Vogt
The News Roundup is a regular feature of the blog where we select a number of 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.
Which Central American and Military Police Units Get the Most US Aid?
Using our growing U.S. security aid database, WOLA compiled this listing and description of military and police units in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras that are getting aid from the United States.
LatAm Nations Get Ready for UN Special Session on Drug Policy
For the third time in its history, the United Nations will hold a special session late this month to discuss global drug policy. Several Latin American nations with much at stake are prepared to make a case for rethinking the so-called “war on drugs.” The special session is scheduled for April 19-21 at UN headquarters in New York, and will include roundtables on issues ranging from implementation of international drug conventions to how to better approach drug use as a health issue. The UN is holding the event partly as the result of lobbying by Mexico,Colombia, and Guatemala at the UN General Assembly in 2012. Many civil society groups have pushed their governments to use the special session as an opportunity to lay the groundwork for future drug reform. While the session is unlikely to result in anything as radical as turning away from the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs — which enforced a prohibitionist approach to drug use across the globe — it’s still a chance to change the tone of the debate around drug policy.
Mexico’s President Is Skipping the Big UN Drug Meeting That Mexico Demanded
President Enrique Peña Nieto’s decision not to attend a three-day special session on drug policy at the United Nations’ General Assembly next week is a sign of his reluctance to seriously address a key issue for Mexico, according to decriminalization activists. “The president is putting his head in the sand,” said Lisa Sánchez of the pro-legalization group Mexico United Against Crime. “The government is sending worrying signals that it is not interested in the issue of drugs. The cancellation of the president’s participation is another sign that he doesn’t care and doesn’t want to debate, and doesn’t want to take a stand.” Peña Nieto’s apparent qualms over seeking a leading role at the special session — which states its goal as the development of an “integrated and balanced strategy to counter the world drug problem” — looks, at least, a little odd. Mexico has an obvious interest in any discussion of international drug policy, not least because of more than 100,000 deaths attributed to the country’s drug wars since the government launched a major crackdown on organized crime almost a decade ago.
Nicaragua’s congress rejects bill to block interoceanic canal project
Nicaragua’s congress has scuppered a bill backed by thousands of people hoping to block a cross-country canal project, saying the legislature does not have the authority to weigh the issue. The draft legislation presented by rural dwellers living along the proposed canal’s path “is rejected as inadmissable”, congress’s first secretary wrote in a letter made public on Monday, adding that the chamber lacks the “jurisdiction” to handle it. The government hopes the ambitious canal project will rival Panama’s lucrative canal, which handles 5% of commercial maritime traffic. Some 28,000 Nicaraguans signed a petition backing the bill, which sought to block the state’s authorisation giving the canal project to a Chinese consortium, HKND, to build and run for 50 years.
Journalists demand justice for 22 colleagues murdered in Honduras
The demonstrators placed coffins at the entrance to the office in memory of the 22 journalists killed during the lifetime of the current government, headed by President Juan Orlando Hernandez. In those cases, 91% of the murderers continue to enjoy impunity, said C-Libre director and former prosecutor Edy Tabora. The committee has called for the creation of a specialised unit to investigate “aggression against freedom of expression.” Tabora said there had been 218 attacks against journalists in Honduras in 2015. Since the 2009 US-backed coup that overthrew President Manuel Zelaya, 59 journalists have been murdered in Honduras, reported TeleSUR. Four have been killed in 2016 and 12 were killed in 2015.
Accusations of Rape and Murder at a Guatemalan Mine Will Finally Be Heard In a Canadian Court
Former Supreme Court of Canada Justice Ian Binnie told VICE News the HudBay case is a test for whether the actions of foreign companies can really be held to account through Canada’s legal system. “The notion generally is that you can’t sue a parent or a shareholder for the misconduct of the company,” Binnie said. “It’s only the company that does the misconduct that’s responsible. But the reality is that the money flows upwards from these operating companies and the direction flows downwards, so I think ultimately the courts are going to have to look at how this is all one big operation.” In the long run, he’s optimistic cases like HudBay will change how Canada deals with mining violence abroad, though he said it will likely take a number of cases potentially going up to the Supreme Court of Canada to change things.
UN could have prevented Haiti cholera epidemic with $2,000 health kit – study
The devastating Haiti cholera epidemic that has claimed thousands of lives and will cost more than $2bn to eradicate could have been prevented if the United Nations had used a basic health kit for a total of less than $2,000, scientists have found. A team of Yale epidemiologists and lawyers has looked at how the cholera bacterium was introduced to Haiti by United Nations peacekeepers relocated there in the aftermath of its 2010 earthquake. Yale’s startling finding is that simple screening tests costing $2.54 each, combined with preventive antibiotics at less than $1 per peacekeeper, could have avoided one of the worst outbreaks of the deadly disease in modern history.
The threat described here is much greater than a bunch of bandits running around with armbands on their camouflage uniforms. As the Urabeños “armed stoppage” and the current spike in attacks on human rights defenders make clear, the Colombian government—and its allies in the United States—need to start taking paramilitarism (or whatever we want to call it) more seriously. This response must go beyond the camouflage-and-armband contingent, and address these larger networks, even if they include the national government’s political allies. As Jorge Restrepo of the Colombian think-tank CERAC puts it, the new strategy has to stop focusing only on the “supply” of violence—the country’s existing assortment of armed and criminal groups—and do more to address the “demand” for violence: the powerful people, many of them within or tied to the establishment, who make common cause with violent actors when it suits them. A strategy that fails to take this broad view will not protect social-movement leaders—or, soon, demobilized guerrillas—from grave harm. It’s as simple as that.
Mapping where gangs operate and modernizing the police force are commonsense security measures, but there is no guarantee these steps will lead to a significant reduction in crime rates. This is because it’s not clear to what extent gangs are responsible for crime and violence in the first place, and Bolivia already boasts much lower homicide levelsthan many other countries in Latin America. The bigger security threat in Bolivia is believed to be the growth of the transnational drug trade, and the presence of foreign criminal groups that are looking to take advantage of the Andean nation’s strategic position as both drug producer and transshipment point. The government’s new measures may increase pressure on the low-level criminal gangs, but it appears they will leave the more organized criminal structures largely untouched.