The
humanitarian
effects
of
violence in the Northern Triangle of
Central America and Mexico
Author:
Paula Gil Baizan
CONTENTS
Executive summary ... 3
Section 1: Introduction ... 7
Part 1: A study on the humanitarian effects of violence in the NTCAM ... 7
Part 2: Workshop with SC staff from the NTCAM offices ... 9
Section 2: Literature review ... 10
Part 1: A working concept of violence ... 10
Part 2: Understanding the phenomenon of violence from a humanitarian perspective ... 12
The root causes of violence ... 13
The drivers of violence ... 16
The dynamics of violence ... 19
The effects of violence ... 20
Section 3: Current practice and fieldwork findings ... 26
Part 1: Guatemala ... 26
Context, causes and dynamics ... 26
Save the Children Guatemala ... 28
Effects of violence ... 29
Good practice highlight ... 33
Case study ... 33
Part 2: El Salvador ... 35
Context, causes and dynamics ... 35
Save the Children International El Salvador ... 36
Effects of violence ... 36
Good practice highlight ... 39
Part 3: Honduras ... 39
Context, causes and dynamics ... 39
Save the Children International Honduras ... 41
Effects of violence ... 41
Good practice highlight ... 43
Case study ... 44
Section 4: Mapping the way forward ... 46
Part 1: Conclusions ... 46
Part 2: Recommendations ... 47
Annex 1: Relevant literature ... 57
Annex 2: Brief on the possible implications of using the term
‘humanitarian’ in the HIF funded study on the humanitarian effects of
violence in the NTCAM – RECOMMENDED FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY 60
Annex 3: How to use The Violence Analysis Framework and its tools ... 65
Executive summary
At least 526,000 people die violently every year, more than three-quarters of them in non-conflict settings. One-quarter of all violent deaths occur in just 14 countries, seven of which are in the Americas (GBAV, 2011).
Latin America’s homicide rate is twice the world’s average, making it the most violent region in the world after Sub-Saharan Africa (UNODC, 2013).
In 2009 alone, the number of people who died in Guatemala (6,498 reported homicides) is higher than the average deaths per year during the 36-year civil war (3,508–5,800 deaths per year) (Restrepo and Tobón, 2011).
There are an estimated 5 million firearms circulating in Central America, of which more than half (2.8 million) are unregistered (Geneva Small Arms Survey, 2012).
In terms of human capital, 1.9% of GDP is lost to violence annually in Latin America, which is equivalent to the region’s spending on primary education (Heineman, 2006).
In Mexico 1 in 3 households has at least one resident who has been the victim of a crime. 19.6% of them have suffered extortion. 92% of these crimes go unreported (INEGI, 2011).
Violence is a looming presence in the lives of every child and young person in the Northern Triangle of Central America and Mexico (NTCAM). There is no way of escaping its reach. Violence has invaded every aspect of life. There is violence at home, at school, in the streets, and in the media. There is violence in how the system operates. The high levels of malnutrition rates, the low levels of access to education, the lack of opportunities for education, are all violent. The phenomenon of violence is pervasive and it harms, displaces and robs children of their potential.
Violence in this context is elusive. It is complex, multicausal and the nature and magnitude of its effects on children and young people has made it challenging to address. Organised armed violence, as a specific form of violence, has seen a surge in the last couple of years with devastating effects for children and vulnerable people in the NTCAM.
communities’ ability to cope using their own resources and furthermore undermines development at a social and individual level.
The extensive loss of life, the high numbers of violence-related displacement, mass kidnappings and disappearances, restrictions of movement, disruption of livelihoods and the number of children forcefully recruited into armed groups, suggests that some countries in the NTCAM exhibit levels of violence comparable to other countries that are not formally at peace.
Despite the serious humanitarian impact of organised armed violence in the NTCAM, agencies working in the region have traditionally only provided humanitarian support to populations affected by natural disasters, or implemented development programmes focused mostly on poverty reduction.
For more than a decade, regional and international organizations have draw attention to the issue of violence in the NTCAM focusing mostly on the importance of ‘citizen security’, ‘social cohesion’ and ‘peaceful co-existence’ and have designed programmes to respond to this. But agencies working in the region, including Save the Children, are realising that the operational models they have been using in these contexts for many years are no longer fit to work in an environment where the actors have changed, the needs of people have evolved and insecurity is an ever-present issue. It has become a necessity to change the way the problem is approached to better understand it and adjust interventions to respond to the needs of children and young people more effectively.
With a grant from the Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF), Save the Children (SC) conducted this study to apply humanitarian approaches to identify key aspects of the impact of widespread organized armed violence on vulnerable children and young people in the NTCAM.
SC’s research was conducted in three phases in September 2014, consisting of: a literature review; fieldwork in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador where a total of 124 were interviewed; and a two day workshop in Mexico City with SC’s staff from the relevant country offices.
This study intends to provoke a paradigm shift in how SC and other interested agencies perceive the problem of organised armed violence in the NTCAM, and how they see themselves as actors working in this complex environment. To that extent, this study is not about solving the challenge of assessing the needs generated by the issue of armed violence in a specific context, but about presenting a different viewpoint to understand the problem better. The ultimate intent is to improve programme design so that more suitable responses, which meet children and women’s needs, can be implemented with the aim of strengthening their capacity to flourish in such environments.
In a region increasingly marked by rapid change, complexity and uncertainty, this study offers insights into perspectives and indicators from the humanitarian sector that should help SC and others think and plan strategically about the future.
The study is organised into four sections that answer three core questions:
1. What is known about the effects of organised armed violence on vulnerable children and young people in the NTCAM?
using humanitarian tools?
3. What approaches can SC in the region take to respond to identified needs?
The following are the key findings from the study:
Ø Due to the nature and magnitude of the effects of widespread violence in NTCAM in comparison to those of other traditional humanitarian crisis, SC believes the situation requires and emergency response.
Ø Violence in the region is of interest to humanitarian organisations because the magnitude and nature of its effects on vulnerable people are comparable to those found in a crisis requiring an emergency respond and include:
o High levels of mortality
o Displacement due to persecution o Mass kidnappings and disappearances
o Limited access to healthcare as a basic service o Restriction of movement
o Disruption of livelihoods
o Inability of governments and communities to respond to the situation o Forceful recruitment of children into armed groups
Ø Applying a humanitarian lens to understand the problem and the effects of violence in the NTCAM presents an opportunity to understand the magnitude and the nature of the effects of the problem as a man made crisis that surpass the vulnerable population’s resources to deal with it. It entails understanding the problem from a perspective that seeks to save lives, alleviate suffering and protect human dignity.
Ø There is no one single root cause explaining violence in the NTCAM. Indeed, no single factor can explain why the levels of violence in these countries and its cities are well above the global average. It is the combination of a number of root causes with drivers that provide an explanation to the extreme violence in the region. Relevant root causes of violence in the NTCAM are: inequality, unemployment, urbanisation, education, social capital, gender, cultural beliefs and age. The root causes identified interact with four main drivers that accelerate the situation of violence in the region: transnational organized crime and drug trafficking organised armed groups (such as gangs, Maras and pandillas), the legacy of war and the availability of firearms and weak criminal justice and social protection institutions.
Ø Violence is not experienced evenly across the NTCAM region. Countries, cities, neighbourhoods and households experience the effects of violence differently depending on a number of factors including socioeconomic position, geographic location and levels of urbanisation.
relation to the effects of violence in the NTCAM region remains a gap that should be addressed to ensure quality programming.
Ø Displacement both internal and external is one of the major effects of violence in the NTCAM region. Children and young adults are particularly affected. Throughout the cycle of displacement - from the identification of a cause to migrate to transit, detainment, and repatriation - there are different points of victimisation where SC and other agencies can position themselves to provide support including direct programming opportunities and advocacy.
Ø The lack of opportunities for economic development remains a clear factor of vulnerability for young people living in high-risk areas and their families. Understanding how market dynamics work in terms of access to employment and discrimination as well in conjunction with micro-economic initiatives and extortion is key to implementing effective programming.
Section 1: Introduction
This study is part of a project funded by the Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) to allow Save the Children (SC) to understand if the effects of widespread organised armed violence – as a result of street gangs, organised criminal groups and drug cartels – on vulnerable children and women in the NTCAM can be analysed as a humanitarian problem. It seeks to create a paradigm shift in the way Save the Children (SC) and other agencies perceive the nature of the problem and change the way they position themselves to respond to it more effectively in relation to needs.
Even though the project has a specific focus on SC as receiver of the HIF grant, it is the intention that the findings and tools contained in this study will also support other agencies working in the region.
The project has followed two complementary approaches to spur change:
(1) The publication of this study seeking to build awareness of the magnitude and nature of violence in the NTCAM by analysing its root causes, dynamics and effects on vulnerable people using humanitarian tools; and
(2) A workshop with regional SC staff from the NTCAM, held in Mexico in September 2014, to generate new perspectives in terms of the organisation’s understanding of the problem of violence and how it intends to respond to it.
Part 1: A study on the humanitarian effects of violence in the
NTCAM
This study has intended to answer three core analytical questions:
1. What is known about the effects of organized armed violence on vulnerable children and young people in the NTCAM?
2. Can the effects of organized armed violence on vulnerable children and young people in the NTCAM be understood from a humanitarian perspective using humanitarian tools?
3. What approaches can SC in the region take to respond to identified needs?
The first question includes a review of existing data and trends to understand the effects of violence in the NTCAM. This includes a review of secondary data, and an analysis of primary data collected during fieldwork in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. It also includes the proposal of a conceptual framework to approach violence for the purpose of this study.
The third question relates to understanding what are the main factors that influence how SC works in the region and its implications. It also intends to shed light in terms of the approaches leading to SC being more responsive to the problem of organised armed violence in relation to the needs of the vulnerable population.
A research process was designed to answer these three questions, informed and underpinned by an analysis framework designed specifically for this study.
It has been found that effective violence programming ‘needs to start with a unified assessment of the scope, scale, and sources of violence and insecurity before focusing on specific drivers or manifestations of violence’ (GBAV, 2011). The analysis framework used for this study follows and is inspired by this recommendation. It draws on humanitarian and conflict assessment tools and indicators. Its purpose is to provide the methodology to guide the research process from the basics of context analysis to the compilation of data through humanitarian indicators, finalising in the development of response options. It has been developed to provide consistency across the three different countries visited for the purpose of this study and therefore was piloted during the fieldwork carried out for this study and a two day workshop organised with regional Save the Children staff in September 2014.
While the proposed framework is not a tool to conduct an emergency needs assessment in the traditional manner, it is a tool that can be used as guidance by practitioners interested in understanding a context of violence in a systematic way. It includes two tools for data collection and facilitation notes to conduct a workshop to develop response options based on a theory of change. More information about what the framework is, its tools and how it can be used can be found in Annex 3 of this study.
The framework guided the research process. It was conducted in two stages to gather information available in the literature and in the field. First, it included a review of secondary information focusing on its general elements and dynamics and the identification of indicators and measurement options to account for the magnitude and the nature of the effects. Second, field visits to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador1 to gather primary data regarding the understanding of the context and the situation of the population through a series of semi structured interviews with a total of 142 key stakeholders including academia, government representatives, SC staff, other local and international NGOs and other interested stakeholders working on the issue of violence in this part of the world. The data collected during the fieldwork was guided by the tools generated as part of the analytical framework mentioned above. The data is qualitative and is subject to a series of limitations given by the nature of the context itself, such as consistency and reliability. There are limits on access to secondary information from high-risk zones (due to invisible borders, fear and mistrust, security problems, etc.), which cause high levels of underreporting and holes in the statistics (unreported crime). For the same reasons there are also difficulties in gaining access to primary sources and limits to the information they can provide. Due to SC’s limited involvement in direct programming around violence in high-risk areas these areas were not visited during the fieldwork for this study. However there were selected opportunities to interview people living in high-risk areas during the fieldwork
Part 2: Workshop with SC staff from the NTCAM offices
A workshop to discuss SC’s current approach to violence in the region, spur a change of perspective and test the framework’s ability to generate effective programming options based on a theory of change was conducted in Mexico City in September 2014. In attendance was staff representing SCI Honduras, SC Guatemala, SCI El Salvador, SC Mexico, SC UK and the SCI Regional Office.
Based on the preliminary results of the fieldwork and the participant’s understanding of the root causes of violence and its dynamics, they assessed the appropriateness and effectiveness of the operational responses currently in place in relation to a shared objective of creating a lasting impact of interventions. The workshop allowed participants to realise that the situation of violence is so generalised in their contexts that there is no way of remaining in the margins in terms of their operational approaches. Violence is a constant element present in every programme they implement weather it is a response to a natural disaster or a more developmental focused intervention. There was clear recognition that this new operational environment requires them to adapt the way they work not only in terms of programming approaches but also in terms of operational structures and practices.
While the current portfolio of SC in the NTCAM region in relation to violence focuses around prevention strategies, mostly in educational centres and schools, participants recognised the need to move to directly assist those affected first hand by violence. Assistance understood in the traditional way: ensuring children and women live in a safe and secure environment where they are protected from the effects of violence and are able to reach their full potential. The concept of moving from programmes focused on prevention to those focused on assistance was recognised as a priority in the region. There was also recognition of the different resources available in each country and the variable appetite within the SCI country offices and SC members to make this important move, which could have important repercussions in terms of the public profile of the organisation and the safety and security of their staff. It was agreed that if a SCI country office or a SC member was to make the move to working directly in violence affected areas the financial and operational support of the SC family will be needed to ensure the new ways of working, including specific staff skills and experience, operational systems and practices are in place.
With this in mind, SC staff designed local and regional strategies that allow for a more integral response package to affected individuals by combining alleviating suffering with other efforts focused on prevention. The strategies developed during the workshop allows for SC to respond working ‘on’ violence and ‘in’ violence: i.e. it opens the possibility for SC, and other interested agencies to be more involved in terms of directly responding to the needs generated by violence instead of only operating through prevention strategies on the periphery. This proposal has as much to do with operational efficiency (responding to identified needs), as it has to do with becoming an agent of change (in the form of measurable outcomes).
Section 2: Literature review
Part 1: A working concept of violence
For more than a decade regional organizations, government entities, and international organizations have compiled data and analysed it to draw attention to the issue of violence in the region. They have focused on the importance of “citizen security”, “social cohesion” and “peaceful co-existence’ and have designed programmes to respond to this (REDLAC, 2013). What has remained elusive so far is the understanding of violence as a crisis that gravely restricts people’s ability to cover their basic needs. Violence in this region is a calamitous phenomenon of a chronic nature that seriously disrupts the functioning of a community and causes human, material, and economic losses that exceed the community’s ability to cope using its own resources2. Violence is an element that influences and determines every individual and group action, including those of leaders, opposing forces, vulnerable populations and also organisations like Save the Children.
Attention to the issue is growing in direct relation to the growth of the problem itself, but humanitarian and development actors are still struggling to operationalize their responses to alleviate suffering and help people get back on their feet. While preventing and reducing violence has been tackled despite the ‘politically sensitive’ requirements of the task there is still a lack of awareness about the scope and scale of the challenge in relation to human suffering and what agencies can do to respond to it and what systems and procedures they would need to have in place in order to be able to do it safely.
Additionally the problem of violence in the region is quite complicated to rationalize due to the complexity of the issue and the context of the NTCAM. Intuitively, an aid professional observing the extraordinarily high levels of poverty and malnutrition coupled with the effects that the widespread situation of violence in a region prone to natural disasters, would be ready to consider this situation as a crisis. The aid worker would likely seek to design response or assistance interventions that mitigate the effects and are directly related to its causes. Following a theory of change approach he or she would make sense to try to understand what the links between cause and effects are to ensure the planned intervention is not only effective in terms of reducing human suffering but is also sustainable in terms of the reducing the likelihood of it happening again. But violence as a main component of this construct is elusive. It is so embedded in the history, social fabric and institutional structure that it is quite complex to determine direct linkages between the causes and the effects it has on individual members of the population.
As many agencies trying to respond to the problem of violence in the NTCAM will know, when trying to untangle this knot of relationships the problem can become so complex and multifaceted that responses end up being simplistic or not existing at all. The confusion around the conceptualization of violence has not only provoked operational paralysis, it has also sparked the discussions between those who consider it a development problem and those who consider it a humanitarian crisis.
So how do we conceptualise violence?
A number of typologies exist to categorize different types of violence. The public health approach often systematizes violence according to the characteristics of those committing the violent act, i.e. self-directed, interpersonal or collective violence. Other academics such as Rozenthal (1998) suggest a division into ‘political, delinquency and interpersonal violence’ and, in a similar vein, Chernick (1998) suggests ‘political, criminal and social violence’. Moser and Shrader (1999) point out that these typologies lack conceptual congruency and propose the categories of political, economic, and social violence, each identified in terms of the type of power that consciously or unconsciously violence is used to gain or maintain. The World Report on Violence and Health (WRVH, 2002) presents a typology of violence, which distinguishes four modes in which violence may be inflicted: physical, sexual, and psychological attack, and deprivation. It further divides the general definition of violence into three sub-types according to the victim-perpetrator relationship: self directed, interpersonal and collective.
Beyond these general distinctions lies a wide range of typologies and categorizations that attempt to delineate different forms of conflict and criminal violence according to the level of organization or intentions of the violent actor. These range from the large-scale violence associated with war to inter-communal, state, and terrorist violence, organized criminal and economically motivated violence, and interpersonal and gender-based violence.3 Each of these categories can be disaggregated into specific violent acts such as terrorism, gang violence, extortion, kidnapping, assault, or rape. Even if this typology is useful to understand the context constructing clear-cut categories is difficult for such a multi-faceted phenomenon and most categories will overlap somewhat.
Contemporary armed conflict has blurred the line between armed conflict and crime, and between politically motivated and economically motivated violence. Armed violence can have multiple and overlapping motives, different forms of armed violence can also be present simultaneously, and be perpetrated by the same actors, and it can change from one form to another over time. Also different forms of armed violence can be linked, permeate each other or share similar underlying causes (GBAV, 2011).
In the NTCAM the experiences of war and deeply entrenched conflict dynamics, the economic dimensions of armed violence, the growth of regional networks involving transnational organized crime and gangs, the high levels of urbanisation and persistently high levels of interpersonal violence, make clear that armed violence in the region is a complex phenomenon to untangle. To make sense of this we propose to understand violence as a social phenomenon.
As all other social phenomena, violence is not only socially caused but is also a social cause. In other words, violence is not only caused by the actions of the individuals but it is also a cause for the actions of the individuals themselves. The action of the society into which an individual is born and in which they move determines their activities. Violence as an ever-present element of the environment in the region determines the beliefs, desires and motives of individual members of a society. Violence in this sense is a cause for many individual actions we associate with the effects of the phenomenon. But at the same time exceptional activities of
individuals or groups have far-reaching effects upon the activities of their fellows. In this sense, violence is also socially caused by activities of individuals that can either perpetuate it or inhibit it as a phenomenon.
In this sense we propose to understand violence in the NTCAM region as
A social phenomenon that stems from deeply rooted structural factors including practices and institutions of a national and international nature, created by certain individuals and groups, and accelerated by environmental circumstances; that has palpable and measurable effects on individuals and communities of a considerable magnitude and a calamitous nature that exceed their ability to cope using their own resources and undermines development at a social and individual level.
Please note that the effects of violence, not violence itself, are calamitous due to its effects and nature. The effects are what constitute a crisis from a humanitarian point of view not the phenomenon of violence itself. The idea behind this is that effects are easier to measure than a whole phenomenon and if they can be measured, they can be responded to. So this working definition will allow us to understand complex issues like lost livelihoods opportunities due to inequality and social mobility, malnutrition as an effect of violence, the role that social vulnerability of women plays in the structural perpetuation of violence and the role of a variety of stakeholders including governments, gangs and civil society.
Taking each component of the working concept of violence the main components of the social phenomenon of violence are:
Root causes (1) as the manifestation of structural factors at a macro level. These root causes interact with drivers (2), which are those elements that contribute to a climate conducive to violence or the escalation of violent conflict. The joint operation of root causes and drivers produces specific dynamics (3) of violence as the way violence is experienced in every context in particular. These dynamics of violence in turn, have effects (4) on people and communities that are measurable and observable. This understanding forms the building blocks of the Violence Analysis Framework developed for this study (see Annex 3).
Part 2: Understanding the phenomenon of violence from a
humanitarian perspective
A natural or man-made event is usually deemed a crisis if the magnitude and the nature of the effects on the vulnerable population are such that it surpasses the government and vulnerable people’s abilities to cope with the crisis with their own resources. For humanitarian agencies, such crises trigger the humanitarian imperative of alleviating human suffering. In such cases humanitarian assistance is generally accepted to mean
The aid and action designed to save lives, alleviate suffering and maintain and protect human dignity during and in the aftermath of man-made crises and natural disasters, as well as to prevent and strengthen preparedness for the occurrence of such situations (Global Humanitarian Assistance, 2014)
as ‘emergency response’ in relation to their right to life.
This section will analyse the root causes, driver, dynamics and effects of violence from a humanitarian perspective. This analysis has involved applying concepts and tools to appreciate the problem from a specific point of view, which does not necessarily imply categorizing the situation as a humanitarian crisis per international humanitarian law (IHL) as the main international humanitarian instrument. 4
The main conclusion of this section is that the effects of violence in the NTCAM demonstrates characteristics that are comparable to those found in a crisis requiring an emergency response. This is later confirmed by the findings per country in Section 3.
The root causes of violence
There is no one single root cause explaining violence in the NTCAM. Indeed, no single factor can explain why the levels of violence in these countries and its cities are well above the global average. It is the combination of a number of root causes with certain drivers as accelerating factors that can give us a clear picture of the situation of violence in the region.
Some structural causes that manifest themselves at the macro level relevant to the NTCAM context are:
Inequality
Latin American societies have been classified as the most unequal societies in the world (UNDP 2010). There is consensus in the literature that income inequality, rather than income in terms of poverty, is among the key factors motivating violent crime (Heinemann, 2006). Despite dramatic increases in gross national income over recent decades, with a poverty rate 31.4 per cent and a rate of indigence (extreme poverty) of 12.3 per cent (2010 figures), the region continues to face abnormally high levels of violence (CEPAL 2010).
increase in income inequality (Costa Rica and Mexico). Larger income inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient is also correlated with an increased incidence of robberies, but not to the same extent as in the case of homicides.
The fact that violence fundamentally hinges on inequality has important implications for the type of growth that needs to occur in order to achieve a reduction in crime and violence levels. It also serves as an indicator for the type of programmes and beneficiary selection mechanisms that need to be in place when designing effective assistance interventions.
Unemployment / underemployment
Some analysts have concluded that there is no correlation between unemployment and crime and violence in Latin America. But the fact that there is no direct causality does not signify that the two issues are unrelated.
Data clearly shows that violence is counter-cyclical: homicide rates rise in periods of low economic activity, suggesting that unemployment has some effect on crime. Where urban economies are unable to absorb populations or accommodate their labour requirements, the risk of inter-personal violence escalates. Young males begin to experience economic deprivation and frustration, which in turn can increase their vulnerability to street gangs and other forms of organized crime (UNDP 2012), which are important articulators of violence in the region. A considerable body of evidence supports the notion that young men in particular respond to the economic returns of crime, and these returns will be perceived as larger if legitimate employment is scarce or non-existent. Thus there is an argument that unemployment is a factor motivating crime and violence in urban areas in the NTCAM.
Urbanisation
Violence is most severe and visible in urban settings in NTCAM (maybe with the exception of El Salvador). Large urban centres like Mexico City or San Pedro Sula, for example, account for more than half the total of their national homicides. Cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants concentrate over 68 per cent of homicides in Guatemala and 63 per cent in El Salvador. Migration from rural to urban areas, together with the growth of informal settlements (slums) are also added factors of violence. Haphazard and rapid urbanization together with deliberate urban designs that reinforce and even accentuate socio-economic divides constitute fertile ground for the exacerbation of violence (Muggah and Krause 2008; Muggah 2012).
While the majority of the literature analyses crime and violence in urban contexts, large parts of the rural population are also affected by it. A high incidence of rural violence is most marked in conflict and post-conflict countries, such as in El Salvador and Guatemala. El Salvador has one of the highest incidences of rural violence, with 76% of homicides occurring in rural areas (Muggah 2014).
Education
may not reduce crime and violence levels immediately, but eventually lead to a significant reduction of crime, especially of the violent sort. The level of educational attainment of the adult population also has a robbery-reducing impact.
It is important to note that education also articulates with other root causes such as unemployment and other cultural appreciations of violence.
Social capital
Another significant factor for violent behaviour is low social capital. Studies demonstrate that societies with low social capital are more susceptible to violence and data suggests that causality runs both ways. Especially when the sense of trust among community members is taken as an indicator for social capital, regressions show a significant crime-reducing effect.
The presence of other types of violence in a society is also important, because it leads to a legitimization of violence to resolve any conflict. Countries such as Mexico, which experience high levels of political violence, also display a high level of tolerance for economic and social violence. One form of violence often feeds into others.
Gender
It is also worth stressing that direct forms of violence disproportionality affects males in Latin America and the Caribbean. Roughly 90 per cent of homicide victims across the region in 2010 were males (OAS 2012). While women and girls experience a wide range of violence – including sexual and domestic violence – even when accounting for under-reporting they are less exposed to collective and organized types of violence. In fact, often when a society’s overall rates of homicide, assault and robbery descend, incidence of violence against women proportionally increases (UNODC 2011). Put another way, the factors driving males to murder other males may be rather different from those that drive men to murder women, the latter having even acquired a typology of its own, ‘femicide’ (GBAV 2011, 105).
The role of girls and women in the societies of NTCAM affects the types of violence they experience in relation to violence generated by gangs and organised crime. So as noted during the fieldwork, even if the literature notes that women and girls are less exposed to collective and organized types of violence the levels of victimisation and vulnerabilities of women in these settings are concerning.
Cultural beliefs
In countries that have gone through an armed conflict, the institutions that remain from that era constitute an important factor in shaping a culture of violence that permeates every layer of society.
As noted during the fieldwork, some analysts note that the culture of force imposed during the colonial era permeates in the collective unconscious leading to a culture of racism and discrimination that ends in violence.
Age (youth bulge)
Age is also an important variable when seeking to understand patterns of violence in Latin America. In keeping with global patterns, young adults (aged 15-29) are the most likely to be killed and injured. It is also worth recalling that homicide perpetration often echo homicide victimization patterns. Young males are the most likely to be killed and to do the killing. Moreover, just as poorer and socially marginalized population groups suffer disproportionately from violence, so too are they the likeliest to be involved in perpetration. For young males in high-risk contexts, the odds were 1 in 50 that they will be murdered by the age of 31 whilst the risk of murder in less violent settings was 400 times lower (UNODC 2011).
Youth violence is highly visible, whether in the form of gangs, in schools or on the streets. Youth violence in the region often occurs in the context of gangs. There are an estimated 30,000 - 35,000 gang members in El Salvador with a similar number in Honduras (WHO 2002).
Youth violence is closely related with violence against children. There is a significant relationship between exposure to violence or victimization as a child and a later propensity for violent conduct. (Buvinic, Morrison and Orlando, 2002). It is estimated that 6 million minors in the region are the object of severe maltreatment and that 80,000 die each year as a result of injuries caused by their parents, relatives or others (De Roux, 1994). A recent study found that in Mexico City 1 million children and 13 % of households experience abuse (Knaul and Ramirez, 2005). This study also finds that abuse has a significant negative effect on human capital: it affects children’s educational attainment and adult labour wages. The public health literature makes a strong case for the prevention of violence against children and domestic violence as a form of primary violence prevention.
The drivers of violence
A review of the literature has led the author to conclude that there are four main drivers accelerating the extreme violence countries in the NTCAM face:
a) Transnational drug trafficking.
b) Organised armed groups (such as gangs)
c) The legacy of war and the availability of firearms d) Weak criminal justice and social protection institutions
These four drivers operate as catalysts for the root causes of violence present in the region as noted above.
another, presently because of flux in the cocaine markets. These conflicts appear to span borders (…). (UNODC, 2012)
The violent impact of drug trafficking forms only part of the region’s problems. While the trafficking of illicit cocaine is the paramount crime issue in the region and has catalysed violence in some areas, the instability and security problem in the region is much deeper, rooted weak institutions and the presence of powerful non-state actors.5 In Central America it’s the actors involved, the organized armed groups and gangs, who are at the core of the problem. (UNODC, 2012)
The organised armed groups operating in these areas have engaged in criminal activities for a long time, including extortion and migrant smuggling, constituting a drain on the nations of the NTCAM.
According to UNODC main types of groups operating in the NTCAM:
1) Territorial groups, such as the Guatemalan crime families, focus on maintaining control over a geographic area and taxing all criminal activity therein, including drug trafficking. Some display of violence is necessary to maintain this control. There are in turn two types of territorial groups:
a. Tumbadores, focus on robbing transportistas of their cargo, and are a major source of violence
b. Street gangs known as Maras or pandillas, have little connection to the transnational drug trade, and focus primarily on extortion and other local power struggles.
2) Transportistas, in contrast, prefer to fly under the radar, simply moving contraband from place to place, paying tribute to territorial groups when necessary.
According to the fieldwork carried out for this study, the majority of the abuse vulnerable people experience at community level comes from the action of gangs.
In 2007, UNODC concluded that the Mara groups (MS-13 and M-18) play very little role in transnational cocaine trafficking. Maras, and other territorial groups appear to be involved in migrant smuggling, human trafficking, and the firearms trade. They are intensely concerned with local affairs as the source of their power and this therefore limits the scope of the activities they can be involved in. Drug trafficking in the region did not produce the territorial groups, such as the Maras, they have different origins, and functions and had an identity and marked interests before becoming involved in drug trafficking.
The classic territorial organized crime group is a kind of state-substitute, imposing order in areas that the formal state has neglected or cannot fully control. In industrialized societies, this typically involves a geographic area, often urban, often peopled with new immigrants or others whose status is marginal. New immigrants and other socially excluded people often lack access to security, to adjudication of disputes, to job markets, to credit, and to other amenities provided to better-established residents. What we call “organized crime” often starts as a mechanism for providing many of these services. (UNODC, 2012)
Organized crime groups, such as Maras, have become a form of governance in the region that contributes to the overall situation of violence and civil disorder. Once trafficking routes started to transit extended areas of land, they collided with pre-existing interests of gangs and that is how drug trafficking became a catalyser for the increase of violence in the region. But these groups exercise other types of violence as well, which can range from violent competition between factions and violence against the public (attacks on drivers, security officers, and passengers on public transport, etc.)
Nevertheless, the most violent municipios coincide with drug trafficking routes in both Honduras and Guatemala. Information gathered during the fieldwork conducted for this study and a study conducted by CIDEHUM and UNHCR in 2012 and notes that high-risk areas for drug related organised crime correspond to those areas with highest rates of external displacement.
The legacy of war and availability of firearms has also been mentioned in the literature and during the field visits as an important driver for the situation of violence in the NTCAM. ‘If Central America’s biggest problem is violence, and 77% of all murders in the region are committed with a firearm, then stopping the flow of weapons to criminals should be a top priority’ (UNODC, 2012). The availability of high calibre firearms by organized criminals and the imbalance of power this causes with local police is used to justify the use of the military in policing, so understanding the issue is of paramount importance. In Central America as a whole, there is estimated to be about one weapon for every ten people. In Guatemala nearly 16 per 100 people own a weapon. (UNODC, 2012).
Some actors interviewed during the fieldwork believe that the region has never really recovered from the wars that ended in the 1990’s. There are two main hypotheses on how the region’s armed conflicts of the past may be contributing to higher crime levels (Cuevas and Demombynes, 2009). First, war may have created a culture of violence among the population, breeding a tendency to rely on violence to fix problems and creating institutions that weren’t dismantled properly after the conflicts ended. The lack of social education in schools to manage conflict after the war in El Salvador, and the role of the military in providing private security in Guatemala have been cited during interviews carried out during the fieldwork as the legacies of the conflict contributing to the current state of affairs.
There are an estimated 5 million firearms circulating in Central America, of which more than half (2.8 million) are unregistered (UNODC, 2012). Certainly not all firearms in circulation can be traced back to the armed conflict. Between 2000 and 2006—several years after the last of Central America’s civil wars had ended—arms imports increased in all six Central American countries. Experts note (World Bank, 2011, UNODC, 2012) that more that the legacy of war is the current traffic of weapons that is the cause for the current levels of availability.
Findings from the research carried out for this study indicate that there is no significant link within countries between the incidence of past armed conflict and current homicide rates. Areas that were hotspots for armed conflict in the past are no experiencing higher levels of violence today. Some experts interviewed during the field visits argue that the effects of past armed conflicts are nationwide, not location specific, noting, for example, that civil war damaged the capacity of criminal justice institutions in the country as a whole or generated a large stock of guns that today are bought and sold across the country. But fragmentary data for Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua from the late 1960s—well before armed conflict and political violence had reached intense levels—show that murder rates were already high then, exceeding 20 per 100,000 (World Bank, 2011). Honduras currently has the highest murder rate in the region and has never experienced an armed conflict.
The relationship between governance and violence is also an important accelerator and perpetuator of violence. As reported by interviewees during the fieldwork conducted for this study, one of the strategies that Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have used to address the issue of organized crime at community level is to increase police presence. This has had questionable effects. Mainly due to the fact that national police services cannot resolve the organized crime problems of this region alone, because reducing the contraband flows requires tools they do not possess. But also because it has left communities caught between the antagonistic relationship generated between organized armed groups and the police, without anyone to actually serve and protect the community. Also, if the first obligation of the State is to ensure citizen security, when it fails to do so, people take matters into their own hands. The response is dependent on resources, and in a region with high levels of inequality the results are dramatic. While the rich use private security (please see more information on this below), the poor must respond directly and one of the clearest indicators of state failure emerges with the appearance of vigilante action.
The dynamics of violence
Violence is not experienced evenly across the NTCAM region. Countries, cities, neighbourhoods and households experience the effects of violence differently depending on a number of factors.
narcotics trade or contested borders between neighbourhoods – are more violent than others. For example, Mexico’s national homicide rate of roughly 20 per 100,000 is deceptive. In fact, the massive increase in homicidal violence in the country is actually concentrated in just 4 out of 31 states. These four states are home to just over 10 per cent of the country´s population (UNDOC 2011). To put this in perspective: Chihuahua has a murder rate of 108 per 100,000 or some 500 per cent higher than the national average (GBAV 2011). The city of Ciudad Juarez in Chihuahua has a homicide rate of 170.5 per 100,000. But even within Ciudad Juarez itself there are important sub-city level disparities such as relatively low patterns of violence in the city’s east or southwest and pockets of intense violent deaths in the city southern centre or north (Muggah and Vilalta, 2012).
Other factors such as levels of urbanisation also play a role in terms of how violence is experienced.
The effects of violence
Macro level indicators
When comparing the indicators used to measure violence in the form of criminality with the indicators used to measure armed violence in the form of a humanitarian crisis we find that there are striking similarities.
In terms of measuring violence there are few reliable and comprehensive indicators used to measure the burden of this issue on a society as a whole. Many institutions including the Interamerican Development Bank, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the OECD-DAC have developed frameworks to measure violence based on a variety of indicators. These indicators do not relate to the categorisation of violence as a humanitarian problem but more as a criminal issue within the boundaries of ‘peace time’. In the literature, definitions of violence in the NTCAM often encompass, inter alia, rates of intentional and unintentional homicide, assault and robbery, kidnapping and intimidation, domestic and sexual violence. But the scale and distribution of violence in NTCAM extends far beyond patterns of homicide and violent victimization so these indicators on its own are not sufficient.
In comparison, the UNDP and the Geneva Declaration Secretariat have developed a framework that encompasses 20 indicators to measure armed violence (Oslo Conference, 2010). These indicators are used by UNDP and other agencies as a measure to classify a situation as a humanitarian crisis. In the spirit of using humanitarian tools to analyse the effects of violence in the NTCAM, we propose to combine both types of indicators to have a comprehensive picture of the effects of violence on the population. Indicators 1 to 17 below have been adapted from the Oslo Conference, the rest have been included from other indicators measuring violence as a criminal issue to ensure a comprehensive picture of the phenomenon of violence is captured.
These indicators have been adapted to form part of the analysis framework used to collect primary data for the purpose of this study. More information on this can be found in Annex 3.
2. Rate of extrajudicial killing per 100,000 population
3. Emergency room visits due to violence related injuries per 100,000 population 4. Rate of victimization caused by armed violence per 100,000 population 5. Rate of women subjected to sexual violence
6. Rate of women subjected to sexual or physical violence by current or former intimate partner
7. Number of children associated with non state armed groups 8. Number of children associated with gangs
9. Number of violence related refugees in a foreign territory 10. Number of violence related IDPs
11. Number of violence related returnees/resettlers
12. Percentage change in willingness of persons to report incidents of armed violence (reporting rate)
13. Percentage change in public confidence in the ability of justice and security providers to contribute to security and safety effectively and fairly
14. Percentage change in real/perceived judicial/criminal impunity (unresolved violent crimes)
15. Formation of national and local strategies for armed violence prevention and reduction
16. Creation and strengthening of routine monitoring and surveillance of armed violence in all its forms
17. Percentage change in bilateral official development assistance devoted to direct and indirect armed violence prevention and reduction programmes. 18. Number of kidnappings
19. Number of deaths of undocumented migrants
20. Number of cases of sexual abuse of undocumented migrants 21. Number of cases of state abuse against street children 22. Number of cases of state abuse against LGBT individuals 23. Number of deaths of journalist
24. Number of deaths of trade unionists 25. Number of deaths of activists
Figure 2: Indicators of armed violence adapted for violence in NTCAM. Source: Elaborated for this study with information from Oslo Conference, 2010
From this list, selected indicators such as homicide rates, violence related displacement, kidnappings and disappearances, access to healthcare and children associated with armed groups, would suggest that some countries in the NTCAM exhibit levels of violence comparable to other countries that are not formally at peace.
The examples below provide an insight into the magnitude of the problem but also the nature of it comparable to other humanitarian crisis.
a) Homicide rates
The most obvious humanitarian outcome of violence in the NTCAM is the extensive loss of life. Added to the productivity losses and associated with the killing and injuring of young adults and children is the pain and suffering and longer-term psychosocial costs that resemble many of the world’s war zones.
Sub-Saharan Africa.6 Resident to just 8.5 per cent of the world’s population, it experiences 27 per cent of all global homicides (UNDP 2012). Central America, for instance, has a population comparable to Spain’s; yet in 2006, while Spain incurred less than a murder a day on average, Central America and the Caribbean exhibited an astounding forty murders per day (World Bank 2011).
Collectively Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras are experiencing the highest murder rates in the world today. Honduras is the single most affected country, with murder rates more than doubling in the last five years, off a very high base. Honduras’ national murder rate in 2011 (92 per 100,000) is one of the highest recorded in modern times.
In Mexico, some 47,000 people died violently between 2007-2011. Both of these totals are equivalent to all conflict related violent deaths combined in the world’s 18-19 on-going wars (Chesser 2012). In Guatemala, so-called ‘peace time’ years have featured more deaths than those incurred during peak years of war (Krause, Gilgen and Muggah, 2011).
The case of Mexico is particularly interesting to weigh the value of homicide rates as a factor for measuring violence. While the data escalated consistently from as early as 2006 peaking in 2011, the latest calculations have shown a decrease in 2013 (INEGI). There were 22,732 homicides in the country in 2013, equivalent to 19 per 100,000 inhabitants. That was down 12.5% from 25,967 in 2012, and below the peak of 27,213 in 2011 when the rate was equal to 24 homicides per 100,000. What is important to consider is that these numbers don't separate which homicides are thought to be linked to organized crime. The main cause of death remains firearms and while the drop in homicides is encouraging, other crimes such as extortion, kidnappings and armed robbery appear to have risen, often committed by small independent gangs that have cropped up (Wall Street Journal, 2014).
b) Violence related displacement
Alongside violent deaths and injuries generated by violence as one of the main indicators of a situation requiring an emergency response are acute forms of displacement. The literature notes that the region does not experience so many refugees, as in the 1970s and 1980s, as a growing swell of internally displaced persons, or IDPs. But soft data indicates that current numbers of internal displaced people are also great, even if yet unquanitified for the most part. There is a rapid growth in displaced groups from the NTCAM. While numbers fluctuate from month to month, there are an estimated 200,000 people displaced by violence in northern Mexico (NRC 2010). Ciudad Juarez alone is said to have witnessed a flight of 230,000 persons between 2007-2009, half of whom became IDPs and others who migrated “voluntarily” to flee chronic violence in their neighbourhoods. The quantification of cross border migration due to violence is still a gap. With the sudden surge of deportations of unaccompanied child migrants Governments in the NTCAM have improved their efforts to quantify children who express violence as the main cause for migrating. While there are some statics available the reliability of the information due to the way it is collected is still questionable. As noted during the fieldwork displacement also follow the wake of violence in cities such San Salvador (Open Democracy, 2014).
Agencies such as UNDP are currently exploring the magnitude and nature of displacement in the NTCAM in relation to the categorisation of the situation as a humanitarian crisis.
c) Kidnappings and disappearances
From a humanitarian perspective, the rapid escalation in mass kidnappings and disappearances are cause for serious concern. Indeed, watchdog groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International describes this phenomenon as “a major human rights crisis” (Amnesty International 2010). A prominent example is the so-called Tamaulipas Massacre where the Zetas Cartel murdered 72 migrants after a botched attempt at ‘mass’ extortion of the migrants (UNODC 2012). Such ‘mass kidnappings’ witness already marginalized and vulnerable persons subjected to additional dimensions of physical, psychological and economic violence. Not only do such actions result in financial extortion and extreme forms of deprivation, but they also generate lasting and frequently inter-generational consequences for families, relatives and friends (Grillo 2011).
d) Access to healthcare
Limited access to basic services is also another issue for concern. In recent assessments carried out by MSF in relation to health care access and availability in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras it was ascertained that ‘violence in some urban areas has disrupted essential services to the point that for much of the population’s acute needs go unmet’ (IRIN 2013).
Chronic organized violence is also said to potentially lead to spikes in post-traumatic stress disorder amongst violence agents, victims, and bystanders (Iberoamericana 2012; ANF 2012; Hinohos-Gallardo 2011), which places an additional strain on health services.
e) Children associated with armed groups
Micro level indicators
Indicators at a micro level can be used to describe the effects of violence in the population by contrasting their current living conditions with that in a previous period reminiscent of methodologies used in natural disasters and conflict. The Violence Analytical Framework developed for this study provides an approach to measuring the effects of violence through a series of indicators adapted from humanitarian tools and methodologies. These indicators and the methodology of the framework itself could be applied and tailored to understand the effects of violence on a specific group of people or community. This would require conducting an assessment which was not part of the scope of the study, but would be an integral part of the work needed to be done by any agency planning to work in violent contexts as noted in the Recommendations.
An important effect of violence in NTCAM at the micro level is the effects of widespread extortion. The practice is common across the full spectrum of economic income, affecting the lower strata the most. In Ciudad Juarez, Mexico an estimated 80 per cent of food vendors are regularly extorted for amounts ranging from US 50 to US 500. (Cullinan 2012; Corcoran 2011). This is no different from the situation experienced in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador as noted during the fieldwork. The cost of extortion is one that could be quantifiable in relation to its effects in household economy but also in relation to its effects on markets and prices and overall economic development. This remains an area to be explored as noted in the recommendations.
Other areas to be explored are the cost of internal displacement, the cost of trans-boundary migration and the cost of lost livelihoods due to violence, and the coping mechanisms vulnerable people use to cope. An analysis of the levels of indebtedness and the livelihoods opportunities available disaggregated per
Reliability of data
It is important to note that due to the nature of the context and the culture of ‘silence’ that pervades in the NTCAM, there are important issues with the reliability of data. There is a lack of reliable longitudinal data and some of the indicators needed to understand violence are not currently being collected. In other cases data is collected but not disaggregated in a way that is conducive to understanding the effects of violence.
An example of these knowledge gaps is kidnapping in Mexico. Kidnapping in Mexico has increased by almost 50 per cent since 2011, but it is difficult to know if this reflects “real” rates since many go unreported and figures often do not capture “temporary” or “failed” kidnapping, and statistics seldom account for mass kidnapping of illegal migrants until they too are massacred or escape. Another example is violence against migrants. It has been reported that the entire corridor of undocumented migration across Mexico originating from Central America is now under the control of extra legal actors but there is no reliable data in terms of missing persons, physical assault or financial extortion.
Section 3: Current practice and fieldwork findings
The information below was compiled during the field visits carried out during September 2014. The amount and type of information collected reflects the type of interviews organised by the host SC in country.
A total of 124 people were interviewed for this study in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. They included SC staff, Government, the Academia, the media, other NGOs, young people, students, teachers and parents. Focus group discussions were carried out with three different groups of students (ages 13 to 18), one group of teachers and one group of parents.
The aim was to understand:
(1) The causes, drivers and dynamics of the phenomenon of violence in each country, and
(2) The effects of violence in their every day lives.
For this purpose, and recognising the differences across the three countries subject of this study, a series of prompts were used during the interviews and focus group discussions to have a comparable set of data from which to work on. The prompts for both points above can be found in the form of the two field worksheets contained in the analysis framework developed for this study.
In relation to the effects of violence, the objective was to gather data to understand whether the situation currently experienced in their countries had elements in common with those of traditional conflicts. Interviewees were asked to comment on their current living situation around themes that reflect indicators used to measure and understand traditional conflicts as noted in Section 2, Part 2 of this study.
Part 1: Guatemala
Context, causes and dynamics
Guatemala is the biggest economy in Central America but is among Latin American countries with the highest levels of inequality, with poverty indicators —especially in rural and indigenous areas— among the highest in the region. Illiteracy, chronic malnutrition and mother-child mortality rates are also amongst the highest in the region. Life expectancy is amongst the lowest in the region. The Human
Development Index (2013) ranks Guatemala 125 among 187 ranked countries a place it shares with Kyrgyzstan.
The people of Guatemala endured a brutal civil war between 1960 and 1996 that resulted in the deaths of approximately 200,000 people. Ninety percent of these deaths are officially reported to be the responsibility of government forces. More than 15 years later after the Peace Accords, interviewees report that some of the structures created during the war haven’t been
‘During the war there was more hope because there was at
least the prospect of peace. Now we don’t
