Insecurity, crime, gender-based violence, and state weakness are parts of everyday life in much of Central America. Also, they are often cited as central drivers for emigration. The issue is especially extreme in the “Northern Triangle” countries—El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala—, which typically rank among the most violent nations in Latin America and the world.
In 2016, El Salvador recorded 81.2 murders per 100,000 individuals—the highest rate in the Americas (with the conceivable special case of Venezuela, where authority insights are commonly fragmented or inaccessible). Honduras and Guatemala reported rates of 59 and 27.3 per 100,000, respectively—lower than that of El Salvador yet, at the same time, sufficiently high to rank as third and fifth most violent in the Latin America and Caribbean region.
The problem is that the institutions and correctional systems are insufficient, corrupt, and ineffective. Thus, most homicides and crimes are often unsolved or even unreported. In the same manner, we find gang activity, drug trafficking, and police corruption. For that reason, citizens who fear the police and distrust the force’s ability to solve crimes—or even reach the scene of the crime—, understandably, take measures to protect themselves. A 2015 research found that Salvadorans alone pay an estimated $400 million in coercion and insurance expenses to gangs, police, and other criminal clusters. This, unsurprisingly, as could be expected use to end in forced migration.
Simultaneously, governments have been, for the most part, unfit to react successfully to issues of crime and security. Jail frameworks are hugely congested and criminal equity frameworks are generally observed as dishonest. Also, national statistics on these issues are regularly inconsistent, low-quality, and politicized.
As a result, the fear of crime leads people to change their daily routines such as evading public transit, retaining children at home, varying jobs, moving neighborhoods, and, eventually, thinking about migration. Therefore, now there is a wave of migration towards the United States. The 2014 America’s Barometer finds that intentions to move abroad have risen significantly in every country in Central America since that year.
As we can see, insecurity really affects all ambits—social, political, and economic. Recent analyses show that most children usually miss school because of fear of violence and criminal gangs. The regional education adviser for Latin American and the Caribbean at UNICEF, Francisco Benavides, stated that “In some areas of Latin America, we are talking about a second lost generation.”
Since preventing crime is the first reason for migration, affected countries, such as the US, should focus on improving the conditions in the Northern Triangle, especially in terms of violence and security. It is better and easier to prevent those serious problems, rather than working to solve them.
Instead of focusing uniquely on domestic policies to address border security and immigration programs, the US should work to improve security and economic conditions in violent Central American countries. Likewise, protect access to public services such as education and transportation. Last but not least, depurating the police will not only give some new guarantees to the violent countries but will reduce the impacts of crime.
“Without strong watchdog institutions, impunity becomes the very foundation upon which systems of corruption are built. And if impunity is not demolished, all efforts to bring an end to corruption are in vain.” – Rigoberta Menchú, Nobel Prize laureate.