Search

Begin New Search Topic Violence Political Geography Honduras

1. Fighting Gangs Under the State of Exception in Honduras

Author:
Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED)
Publication Date:
12-2023
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED)
Abstract:
A year after the implementation of the state of exception on 6 December 2022, this report explores the evolution of violence likely related to gang activity between January and November 2023. ACLED data show that the security measures implemented thus far have yielded mixed results. Armed clashes and violence targeting civilians have continued unabated throughout 2023 due to persisting competition among gangs, especially in the country’s overcrowded prisons where violence has surged. Gangs continue to extort transportation workers in order to generate revenues, albeit the rate of these events has slowed down in 2023 compared to 2022. The geography of the violence points to gang violence moderately increasing and spreading beyond the crime hotspots of Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. This finding substantiates claims that criminal groups have expanded to other strategic areas for drug trafficking and production, a phenomenon potentially exacerbated by state of exception measures and increased pressure on gangs in the most populous urban areas due to frequent law enforcement operations.
Topic:
Security, Law Enforcement, Violence, and Gangs
Political Geography:
Latin America and Honduras

2. Fleeing Violence in Central America: Time to Implement Canada’s Resettlement Policies

Author:
Rachel Kiddell-Monroe and Celine de Richoufftz
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Institute for the Study of International Development, McGill University (ISID)
Abstract:
Canada should take proactive and concrete actions to protect Northern Central American refugees fleeing violence including: Implementing its policy to offer resettlement to Central American refugees caught in legal limbo in Mexico. Ensuring it welcomes asylum seekers who are at risk under the US immigration system. Supporting Northern Central American states in their efforts to build fairer and more efficient immigration systems. Advocating for safe passages, legal pathways and for an end to the criminalization of clandestine immigration.
Topic:
Immigration, Border Control, Refugees, Violence, and Asylum
Political Geography:
Central America, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador

3. Paradoxes of Protection: Compassionate Repression at the Mexico–Guatemala Border

Author:
Rebecca Galemba, Katie Dingeman, Kaelyn DeVries, and Yvette Servin
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
Anti-immigrant rhetoric and constricting avenues for asylum in the United States, amid continuing high rates of poverty, environmental crisis, and violence in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, have led many migrants from these countries to remain in Mexico. Yet despite opportunities for humanitarian relief in Mexico, since the early 2000s the Mexican government, under growing pressure from the United States, has pursued enforcement-first initiatives to stem northward migration from Central America. In July 2014, Mexico introduced the Southern Border Program (SBP) with support from the United States. The SBP dramatically expanded Mexico’s immigration enforcement efforts, especially in its southern border states, leading to rising deportations. Far from reducing migration or migrant smuggling, these policies have trapped migrants for longer in Mexico, made them increasingly susceptible to crimes by a wide range of state and nonstate actors, and exacerbated risk along the entire migrant trail. In recognition of rising crimes against migrants and heeding calls from civil society to protect migrant rights, Mexico’s 2011 revision to its Migration Law expanded legal avenues for granting humanitarian protection to migrants who are victims of crimes in Mexico, including the provision of a one-year humanitarian visa so that migrants can collaborate with the prosecutor’s office in the investigation of crimes committed against them. The new humanitarian visa laws were a significant achievement and represent a victory by civil society keen on protecting migrants as they travel through Mexico. The wider atmosphere of impunity, however, alongside the Mexican government’s prioritization of detaining and deporting migrants, facilitates abuses, obscures transparent accounting of crimes, and limits access to justice. In practice, the laws are not achieving their intended outcomes. They also fail to recognize how Mexico’s securitized migration policies subject migrants to risk throughout their journeys, including at border checkpoints between Guatemala and Honduras, along critical transit corridors in Guatemala, and on the Guatemalan side of Mexico’s southern border. In this article, we examine a novel set of data from migrant shelters — 16 qualitative interviews with migrants and nine with staff and advocates in the Mexico–Guatemala border region, as well as 118 complaints of abuses committed along migrants’ journeys — informally filed by migrants at a shelter on the Guatemalan side of the border, and an additional eight complaints filed at a shelter on the Mexican side of the border. We document and analyze the nature, location, and perpetrators of these alleged abuses, using a framework of “compassionate repression” (Fassin 2012) to examine the obstacles that migrants encounter in denouncing abuses and seeking protection. We contend that while humanitarian visas can provide necessary protection for abuses committed in Mexico, they are limited by their temporary nature, by being nested within a migration system that prioritizes migrant removal, and because they recognize only crimes that occur in Mexico. The paradox between humanitarian concerns and repressive migration governance in a context of high impunity shapes institutional and practical obstacles to reporting crimes, receiving visas, and accessing justice. In this context, a variety of actors recognize that they can exploit and profit from migrants’ lack of mobility, legal vulnerability, and uncertain access to protection, leading to a commodification of access to humanitarian protection along the route.
Topic:
Migration, Immigration, Border Control, Violence, and Humanitarian Crisis
Political Geography:
United States, Central America, North America, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador

4. Urban Security Exchange: Data, Design and Innovation for Urban Security

Author:
Renata Avelar Giannini, Katherine Aguirre, and Isabel de Sola
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Igarapé Institute
Abstract:
The Urban Security Exchange: Data, Design and Innovation for Urban Security was held on January 22 and 23, 2018 in San Salvador, at a critical time for Central American countries. On one hand, in early 2018, the capitals of the Northern Triangle countries – Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – reported significant reductions in their high homicide rates; while on the other, these positive results highlighted the complex efforts necessary to maintain this downward trend amidst the struggle against violence. Effectively, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras present some of the highest homicide rates in the world. In 2018, El Salvador leads the ranking and its capital, San Salvador, is one of the most violent cities on the planet. Nevertheless, such cities were able to reduce their homicide rates between 2016 and 2017. In El Salvador, the rate dropped by 34%, in Honduras, 22% and in Guatemala, 4%. This context of persistently high homicide rates in spite of reductions was a key element throughout the discussion endorsed by the Urban Security Exchange.
Topic:
Crime, Law Enforcement, Violence, and Police
Political Geography:
Central America, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador

5. Global Violent Deaths 2017: Time to Decide

Author:
Claire McEvoy and Gergely Hideg
Publication Date:
12-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Small Arms Survey
Abstract:
Lethal violence claimed 560,000 lives in 2016—more than one person every minute of every day of the year. Global Violent Deaths 2017: Time to Decide, a report from the Small Arms Survey, shows that while the global conflict death rate dropped in 2016, the global homicide rate increased for the first time since 2004. Although this does not necessarily indicate a new trend, it does signal growing insecurity in non-conflict areas. Of the five countries with the highest death rates in 2016—Syria, El Salvador, Venezuela, Honduras, and Afghanistan—only two had active armed conflicts. The study also elaborates scenarios for the future based on current trends, to assess the number of people that could be saved if states implement effective violence reduction initiatives in support of Agenda 2030, as opposed to more negative outcomes if trends worsen. If prevailing trends remain unchanged, the annual number of violent deaths is likely to increase to 630,000 by 2030. On the contrary, if states commit themselves to effectively address conflict and armed violence, the number of annual deaths could be lowered to 408,000 by 2030—even considering the population increase. In total, over the next twelve years, approximately 1.35 million lives could be saved. Within the Agenda 2030 framework and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals, states have an unprecedented opportunity to save lives. It’s time to decide.
Topic:
Security, Sustainable Development Goals, and Violence
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador, and Global Focus