Normally we get bad news about US-based multinationals but...HanesBrands celebrated

Normally we get bad news about US-based multinationals but...

HanesBrands has been honored by the Great Place to Work Institute for its workplace practices in its El Salvador, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic manufacturing plants.

The Great Place to Work Institute named Hanes the third best multinational company to work for in Central America and the Caribbean where the company has nearly 30,000 employees. The company was ranked the second best place to work in both El Salvador and Honduras – the first ranking ever for an apparel manufacturer in Central America.

Great Place to Work gathers data from employee surveys that provide a clear picture of the state of the company's culture benchmarked against other companies. The rankings are predominantly based on employees' responses to the Trust Index Survey, which measures employee perception of the workplace, as well as institute's culture audit, which is completed by management and evaluated by an independent Great Place to Work team.

"We are excited that our own employees were surveyed and recognized as a great place to work," said Maria Elena Sikaffy, vice president of human resources, Hanes Central America and the Caribbean. "These awards reflect the passion of our employees, our commitment to responsible employment practices, and our company's worldwide leadership in ethics. This has allowed us to be a growing responsible community member in these countries."

While we are debating Honduras, what's its President up to?

While we are debating the security situation in Honduras, what is President Juan Orlando Hernandez up to? Dana Frank says a whole lot of no good in Just Like Old Times in Central America for Foreign Policy.

If the vicious, anti-democratic record of Hernández’s regime is so clearly documented, then why is the Obama administration celebrating the regime and looking the other way at its militarization and human rights abuses? The White House, it appears, is aggressively locking in support for the current Honduran government in order to solidify and expand the U.S. military presence in Central America, while serving transnational corporate interests in the region.

After the 2009 military coup, the United States moved aggressively to stabilize and consolidate the post-coup regime, in order to ensure a regime loyal to the United States and to corporate interests, and to send a message to the democratically elected center-left and left governments that had come to power in Latin America in the previous 15 years that they could be next. U.S. police and military funding for Honduras increased in the years that followed, under the pretext of fighting drug traffickers — who have flourished in the post-coup free-for-all of criminality.

Ok, there's maybe a sentence or two in what I quoted that I agree with, but go read the post for yourself.

If the US got to choose, we wouldn't have to work with Perez Molina, Sanchez Ceren, or Hernandez. However, that's who the people of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras elected.

To a certain extent, I like the policy suggestions at the end of the op-ed.

The administration should immediately and publicly distance itself from Hernández and his regime. It should stop celebrating Hernández, demand the removal of the military from domestic policing, and cut all U.S. police and military funding. It should challenge IMF and IDB funding for Honduras, and re-examine the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR), which, as the AFL-CIO underscores, has been destructive to the Honduran economy.

More positively, the United States should vigorously support a U.N.-sponsored commission on impunity modeled on the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, and ensure that the commission remains free of Hernández’s influence. The Obama administration’s model for economic development should emphasize labor rights, promote a diverse industrial sector generating good, skilled, well-paying jobs, and support diverse, sustainable agriculture development that supports the land rights of campesinos and indigenous peoples. Above all, the United States should reframe its role in Honduras as one in defense of human rights and social justice, rather than against them.

I would probably argue that Frank's suggestions in paragraph one are very unlikely. The US is not going to cut all police and military funding. Right or wrong, the US generally sees such assistance, in all its imperfections, as serving US interests and as leverage to get the Honduran government to act in a way that we prefer.

I don't imagine that the US would have too many problems with the second paragraph. The US government would probably say that that is actually our current approach to dealing with Honduras. Well, maybe except for a Honduran CICIG which I have argued for in the past.

If you are going to update the Honduras travel warning, at least update it

Last week I noted that the US' updated travel warning for Honduras seemed rather strange in its description of what is generally considered the world's most violent country outside of a war zone. Obviously, that's not some sort of sophisticated analysis. Fortunately, Boz and John noticed the same thing and went it to greater detail.

Boz notes how the warnings for 2012, 2014, and 2015 all report that the country is in the early stages of substantial reforms to its criminal justice system. He's "looking forward to the day when Honduras has moved beyond the early stages and actually implemented the promised substantial reforms."

John, who has been living in Honduras for the last few years, also notes how this documents seems to have been entirely cut and pasted from previous warnings, not just the "early stages of substantial reform" section.

We US citizens are privileged.

The travel warning is bogus.

I do not deny that there is violence – especially in the big cities and along the north coast. I do not deny the presence of crime – both petty crime and large scale crime related to drug trafficking and gangs (and corrupt police, military, and economic elites). I do not deny the violence in our area – often due to long-held resentments, family feuds, and alcohol abuse.

But much of the violence continues because the system does not respond to the people. Impunity runs rampant.

The US warning does not address this – and I think throwing a billion dollars into the region won’t help. That's another post.

If the travel warnings are written like the Freedom House reports I help prepare, there is a somewhat bureaucratic reasons why there are so many similarities from one report to another. In writing the FH reports, we are asked to use the previous year's report as the template for the next year's report. When we have new information, for example on homicides or threats against the press, we update it.

When there is no new information but we addressed the issued in the previous report, perhaps an investigation into a criminal case or the rights of the indigenous are not respected are detailed, we either include the same information in the new report even with no new information (because that is important in itself) or delete that information from the next report. It depends if something else important occurs and space is needed for that (there's always a word count).

US updates Honduras Travel Warning

The US Government recently updated its travel warning for Honduras.

The Department of State continues to warn U.S. citizens that the level of crime and violence in Honduras remains critically high, although it has declined in the past two years. This Travel Warning supersedes the Travel Warning dated June 2014 and includes additional information on crime and security in Honduras, as well as updated contact information.

Tens of thousands of U.S. citizens visit Honduras each year for study, tourism, business, and volunteer work without incident. However, crime and violence are serious problems throughout the country. The Government of Honduras lacks sufficient resources to properly investigate and prosecute cases, and police often lack vehicles or fuel to respond to calls for assistance. The police may take hours to arrive at the scene of a violent crime or may not respond at all. Members of the Honduran National Police have been arrested, tried, and convicted for criminal activities. Many more are under investigation. As a result, criminals operate with a high degree of impunity throughout Honduras. The Honduran government is still in the early stages of substantial reforms to its criminal justice institutions.

Honduras has had one of the highest murder rates in the world for the last five years. The U.S. Embassy has recorded more than 100 murders of U.S. citizens since 2002. Many cases over the last 14 years are still awaiting trial. The vast majority of serious crimes in Honduras, including those against U.S. citizens, are never solved. In 2014, there were ten murders of U.S. citizens reported to the U.S. Embassy with seven of the ten resulting in arrests or prosecutions.

Honduras comes across rather well in the beginning and then it sort of goes down hill from there. It actually sounds rather subdued, like they were smokin something, but maybe that's just me.

The warning sounds pretty mild, especially compared to how I remember various warnings for Guatemala and El Salvador.

You can read the rest of the travel warning here.

Joint Statement regarding The Plan for the Alliance for Prosperity of the Northern Triangle

The Presidents of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, and the US Vice President States released a Joint Statement regarding The Plan for the Alliance for Prosperity of the Northern Triangle today in Guatemala City.

The Presidents of El Salvador, Salvador Sánchez Cerén; Guatemala, Otto Pérez Molina; Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández; and, the Vice President of the United States, Joseph Biden, met in Guatemala City on March 2-3, 2015, with the President of the Inter-American Development Bank, Luis Alberto Moreno, to discuss the important commitments which will accelerate the implementation of the Plan for the Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle of Central America.

The senior representatives also agreed to conduct joint high-level dialogues on security issues with relevant authorities, to discuss social issues with civil society, and to review trade and investment issues through meetings between the U.S. private sector and the private sectors of the Northern Triangle of Central America. All these meetings will be held in the first half of this year.

The leaders stressed that their governments agreed to continue the development of the Plan for the Alliance for Prosperity of the North Triangle in an expedited and comprehensive manner, through coordinated efforts among the three countries of the Northern Triangle and with the technical support of the Inter-American Development Bank. They will continue this work throughout 2015. The draft implementation plan and roadmap for each of the above-mentioned topics will be presented in Washington on March 16. For its part, the Government of the United States reiterated its commitment to support these efforts.

The leaders agreed that the joint regional plan and its continued implementation represent significant milestones for the collaboration among the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

The statement is too long to reproduce here so just click through to read it in its entirety. It looks like a pretty extensive list of what each country is going to do on its own and in collaboration (No mention of CICIG however). But the devil is still going to be in the details and depend upon how much, if any, additional funding the US Congress approves.

US criticizes Honduran labor violations

While the US already has taken Guatemala to task for failing to develop and enforce adequate regulations to protect its workers, a new US report looks like it has just laid out an argument why the US should start moving in a similar direction in Honduras.

The U.S. government said in a report released Friday it found evidence of illegal use of child labor in Honduras as well as systemic problems with the country's ability to enforce its labor laws.

The findings from its investigation were issued three years after the AFL-CIO and 26 other Honduran unions and other groups filed complaints of violations of the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement.

The labor protections are intended to raise living standards in other countries but also protect U.S. workers from unfair competition. U.S. companies were involved in Honduran workplaces cited in the report and farms and factories cited exports to the U.S.

The Office of Trade and Labor Affairs (OTLA), a division of the Department of Labor, said its detailed review turned up labor law violations in almost all of the still operating businesses that the unions and groups complained about. OTLA said its review left it with "serious concerns regarding the government of Honduras' enforcement of its labor laws in response to evidence of such violations."

However, after browsing the report's introduction, it looks like the investigations are at a much earlier point than Guatemala. In addition, the government of Honduras responded in a manner that might give it some time and allow for the US and its Honduran partners to work out their differences short of arbitration.

Throughout the review process, the Government of Honduras has demonstrated a willingness to engage the U.S. government concerning the issues raised in the Submission and the actions needed to remedy the problems identified. In addition to this engagement and open communication with the OTLA, the Government of Honduras took the important step of launching a dialogue and holding regular meetings with representatives from unions and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) interested in the Submission. While the OTLA welcomes the Honduran government’s efforts and engagement with civil society, there has not yet been measureable systemic improvement in Honduras to address the concerns raised.

You can read the final report here.

Lawyers are disappearing in Mexico and Central America

Karla Zabludovsky has a terrific story on Mexican Lawyers Are Disappearing, Leaving Nothing But Fear And Questions Behind for Buzzfeed.

DURANGO, Mexico — When Claudio Hugo Gallardo disappeared in 2013, his sons scoured the local hospital, prison, and morgue frantically. They combed through video footage recovered from Gallardo’s last known location and even inquired with the cartels whether their operatives had picked up the well-known lawyer.

But before Gallardo’s family could find him, they stopped looking.

“It’s for our own peace. We don’t want threats,” said Claudio Gallardo, one of the attorney’s sons. The family has floated several theories, including the involvement of government officials, cartel thugs, and a combination of both, but prefer to be discreet about their findings, citing orders by local authorities to stop prodding.

Gallardo is one of more than 60 lawyers killed or disappeared here during a spate of crimes against litigators that began in 2008, according to members of Durango’s Benito Juárez Bar Association. Some of the bodies that have been recovered carried messages from criminal groups saying the litigator should not have been defending certain clients, said Celina López Carrera, who is in charge of the state’s public prosecutors.

The Durango attorney general’s office opened a specialized unit to investigate crimes against lawyers in 2010. The unit’s head, Orieta Valles, said none of the 14 cases assigned to it have been solved.

Unfortunately, the murder of lawyers is not confined to Durango, Mexico. From a March 2013 Insight Crime article

More than 50 lawyers were murdered in Honduras between 2010 and 2012, according to a government report, with almost total impunity for their killers.

In the first three years of President Porfirio Lobo's rule 53 lawyers were murdered, yet only two people have been convicted in the cases, according to a report submitted to the Honduran Congress by the country's National Human Rights Commission.

The lawyers, 43 of whom were men, worked not only in criminal law, but also in areas such as commercial and family law, reported La Tribuna. Some worked as public prosecutors, while some provided legal advice to unions and campesino social movements.

The majority were killed inside their vehicles, often in front of their family, friends, colleagues or clients. Of the 53 murders, 49 were carried out with a firearm.

Other reports estimate 68 deaths in Honduras over the three year period.

Meanwhile at least ten lawyers were killed in Guatemala in 2013.

Honestly, I don't remember coming across articles indicating that lawyers were being targeted in El Salvador.

While the press and courts are pressured in all three countries of the Northern Triangle, the extent of the violence is just so much greater in Guatemala and Honduras than it is in El Salvador.

It's hard to build a democratic rule of law when those tasked with carrying out such an important function are targeted by members of the state as well as gangs and organized crime.

Honduras: A Government Failing to Protect its People

Members of the Latin America Working Group Education Fund (LAWGEF) and Center for International Policy (CIP) recently traveled to Honduras to investigate current conditions on the ground.

What we found was a security apparatus and criminal justice system in desperate need of reform and a population with little faith in its government. Issues of violence, impunity, and corruption that have plagued the country for years are intensifying. 

Don't miss the entire series:

Deported Back to Limbo: the Forced Exodus from Mexico

Honduras’ Military: On the Streets and in the Government

Unrelenting: Constant Peril for Human Rights Defenders, Members of the LGBT Community, and Journalists in Honduras

The Key to Everything: Investigations and Justice in Honduras

San Pedro Sula: Nearly a War Zone

The Law of Secrets: What the Honduran Government Doesn’t Want People to Know

Can U.S. Aid Help Address the Perfect Storm in Honduras? (updated)

Washington Post endorses Obama aid request for Central America

The Washington Post Editorial Board has come out in lukewarm (?) support of President Obama's aid request for the Northern Triangle of Central America.

In short, the United States has a strong interest in helping Central America achieve the prosperity and stability that have so long eluded it. President Obama’s fiscal 2016 budget proposal addresses that interest with a request for $1 billion in aid to the northern triangle. A little more than half of that would go to beefing up the countries’ security forces and public institutions, with the rest going to economic development. This would be the first installment on a five-year program of still-undetermined size, officials say.

This is the first that I've heard of US financial support for a five-year program. I might be wrong but I am guessing that this is one billion of the fifteen billion that Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador are looking for to support their five-year plan. However, the link from the Post goes to the White House's Fact Sheet from June that only mentions two small USAID plan that will run for five years so it's not entirely clear. I haven't read that the Administration is prepared to ask for increased resources not just next year, but every year after. That's what I had in mind earlier this week.  

The WP isn't ready to proclaim the surge in unaccompanied minors over but they are somewhat optimistic by this year's number of migrants which is down from last year. It makes sense - most who can and want to leave have done so already. That should provide respite for a few months or so. However, the decreased flow out of Central America means that this will still be the second highest year on record. That's not something to celebrate.

I'm with their call for economic and physical security. Who isn't?

I really need to get more familiar with Plan Colombia because it has apparently solved world peace. Everybody loves it or everybody thinks that it is very useful to persuade reluctant members of Congress to support whatever initiative that our heart's desire.

High quality leadership is needed in the region. We are on board here. A colleague and I tried to get an op-ed published on this month's ago but no luck.

The concern with the FMLN manipulating "constitutional rules for their advantage" - somewhat confusing unless you are speaking about Decree 743 and the packing of the courts a few years ago. To reduce the crisis to FMLN manipulation, however, would be naive and sustained for simply partisan means. Aligning with Venezuela? Well, you have Alba Petroleos but that sure seems like the extent of it. FMLN and El Salvador alignment with Venezuela might be an issue but it hasn't come up since US right wing forces tried to sabotage the FMLN in last year's presidential election. That's not to say that there are not problems with corruption and transparency. To be fair, they did highlight insecurity in Honduras earlier in this post.

Finally,

Mr. Obama’s aid plan is appropriately ambitious and generous; over the coming years, though, it must also be conditioned on recipients’ fulfillment of conditions related to transparency and respect for human rights. That approach, or a version of it, has been tried before in Latin America, both in Colombia and in Central America during the 1980s. Congress and the administration must adapt a new conditionality for the Central America crisis of today.

The aid plan is welcome news. However, I would stop short of calling it "ambitious and generous." It breaks down to $33 per capita. I cringe, however, at the next statement which goes on about conditionality. There needs to be some accountability for the money and the programs, but conditionality like this does not have a good history in Central America. Here is a paragraph that mostly got cut from my recent World Politics Review analysis.

I do not doubt that the countries of the Northern Triangle have carried out some reforms that indicate a willingness to make hard decisions. However, it feels somewhat reminiscent of the Cold War when President Ronald Reagan’s administration would go before the US Congress to certify that the Salvadoran military and government were taking human rights more seriously because they had killed fewer people than the previous month. We can point to isolated examples of progress but it is challenging to identify sustained progress.

The conditions that the US placed on aid to El Salvador during the 1980s had some success. The Salvadoran military, when pressured, did respond to US calls to respect human rights - not absolutely, but better. However, it also led members of the US Reagan administration to go before Congress and the media to lie about significant progress. It also led many members of Congress to play dumb and simply pass all responsibility for the failures of US policy to the executive branch.  

702,000 children between seven and 17 years old work in Guatemala

Some stats on child labor in Guatemala:

A total of 702,000 children between seven and 17 years old work in Guatemala, mostly indigenous children from rural areas...

Out of the total, 427,000 are indigenous children, of whom 336,000 live in countryside areas, while 274,846 are from mixed ethnic groups...

One percent of working children, work at night, while a similar percent work from afternoon to evening....

Most working children in Guatemala (60.5 percent) have unpaid jobs, 19.1 percent work for private individuals, 13.6 percent are laborers, 2.9 percent carry out housework and only 1.1 percent work for themselves, while 2.8 percent refused to answer this question.

97.2 percent of respondents ruled out having access to social insurance, while 11.5 percent said they worked exposed to toxic substances.

See also this article from Alberto Arce on Poverty, violence push Honduran children to work from December.

Police kidnap Honduran businessman

Yesterday, I linked to a story on Twitter about how four policemen were arrested shortly after they had kidnapped a businessman in Honduras. The police belonged to the Military Police, a unit created when Juan Orlando Hernandez was a member of Congress in 2013. The police were seeking $6,000 for their victim. I commented that some things never change. With all the recent reforms and specially vetted units, police are frequently still the perpetrators of violence in Central America.

However, I was thinking more historically than today. In The Protection Racket State that I blogged about a few weeks ago, there are several stories about El Salvador's security forces kidnapping wealthy businessmen during the 1970s and 1980s and then demanding ransom. Many security officials got rich at the same time that the guerrilla cells that would eventually form the FMLN were kidnapping the same group of people to build their war chest. While kidnappings and killings of wealthy businessmen in the 1970s and 1980s were committed by the FMLN, so too were many committed by the military and police which often made it difficult to actually determine who had been responsible for what.

The protection racket comes in to play because the military then played up on citizens' fears of kidnapping and violence to justify their continued rule. Things were so bad that they tried to convince Salvadorans (and the US) that they needed them. They would not only demand political support from the elites that they were kidnapping and protecting, but financial support as well. We'll try our best to prevent your kidnapping if you pay extra - just a little extortion, a protection racket.

The military/police have been kidnapping elites and businessmen for at least 40 years. When, in the case of El Salvador, we talk about an elite-military alliance that controlled the country from 1932 on, we are largely correct. However, it was not absolute. Each had its own preferences that caused them to work against the interests of the other. ARENA was formed because they could no longer rely upon the military to protect elite interests and because of the soft reforms that the US was pushing to transform the country in order to prevent and win the war. Part of the divide between some elites and military in the late 1980s was due to the fact that military/police kidnappings of civilian elites had increased.

I imagine that some of the police and security firms are making out pretty nicely from the insecurity in the region, and many are even contributing to it.

U.S. Can’t Solve Central America’s Problems With Money Alone

I have a new article with the World Politics Review entitled U.S. Can’t Solve Central America’s Problems With Money Alone.

On Jan. 29, in an op-ed for The New York Times, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden announced that the White House would request $1 billion from Congress in its 2016 budget to finance a range of development, security and good governance initiatives in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, often referred to as Central America’s Northern Triangle. The news is a welcome announcement for a region that is suffering from the effects of long-term poverty, inequality and insecurity. Despite the promise of U.S. aid, however, a great deal will have to fall into place for Washington’s new commitment to Central America to deliver much-needed results on the ground.

I'm skeptical that the president will get what he wants from Congress and that the US and its Northern Triangle partners have the ability to carry out meaningful reform in the short-term. However, even incremental improvements are worth the financial expenditures.

Check it out here.

Year end homicide statistics for Central America

Year end homicide statistics are starting to trickle in and it looks likes a mixed year. The worst performing country was El Salvador where authorities claim that homicides increased by 57% in 2014 compared to the previous year. With 3,912 homicides, the country's homicide rate finished at approximately 63 per 100,000. Given the large number of disappearances, it's not clear if homicides have actually increased or whether gangs are no longer hiding the bodies (that's been one of the anti-truce arguments for awhile). Speaking of the 2012 gang truce, President Salvador Sanchez Ceren admitted that the previous Funes government, of which he served as vice president, negotiated the pact with the gangs.

Honduras remains the most violent country in Central America with a homicide rate in the upper 60s. However, 2014 was a significant improvement over 2013 (79) and 2012 (85). Honduras, El Salvador and Venezuela finished the year with homicide rates higher than Iraq and Syria. Not entirely a big fan of the comparison, but it does give you an indication of how desperate conditions are in those three countries.

Homicides in Belize increased in 2014 and the country finished with a rate of approximately 34, roughly a 20% increase.

On the positive side (?), Guatemala, finished the year with a homicide rate of approximately 31 per 100,000.

data preliminar de @mingobguate indica que terminamos con 4998 homicidios en 2014 = tasa de 31.3 por cada 100 mil habitantes (15.96M a dic.)
— Carlos Mendoza (@camendoza72) January 5, 2015

Carlos uses the National Civil Police's numbers. They measure murders. INACIF, which measures violent deaths, always has higher numbers that the PNC. Fortunately, they also show a decrease. Here is Carlos again with a look at homicide rates since 2009.

van 2 administraciones @GuatemalaGob bajando violencia homicida y data @INACIFGT confirma descenso @PNCdeGuatemala pic.twitter.com/qTIbeXpuqX
— Carlos Mendoza (@camendoza72) January 5, 2015

That's rather impressive, no? It's even pretty close to Colombia's 2014 rate but I'm sure everyone knew that.

Central America remains one of the most violent region's of the world. Maybe I am a bit optimistic that the two more populous countries, Guatemala and Honduras, were able to reduce their homicide rates once again.

Increasing food insecurity in Central America

On Friday, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned the 2.5 million people in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador had been forced into conditions of food insecurity.

The drought in the three countries is “turning into a creeping humanitarian crisis”, Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN’s humanitarian agency, told reporters in Geneva.

Subsistence farmers, farm labourers and low-income families were especially at risk, with young children and pregnant women considered the most vulnerable, he said.

A full 80% of farmers in the worst-hit areas of El Salvador had reported losing all of their crops, while 75% of maize and bean crops in Honduras and Guatemala had failed.

The lack of rain has also resulted in the death of thousands of cattle.

“In the coming months, food insecurity is expected to get worse as families deplete their food stocks,” Laerke warned.

In Guatemala, the government had already declared “a state of public calamity” in 16 departments back in August, and by October 30,000 families had depleted their food stocks.

“These families are today in deep distress,” he said.

In the so-called “dry corridor” in the east of the country, it was estimated that one in four households were suffering from moderate to severe malnutrition.

The Honduras government meanwhile had found already back in September that the drought had left nearly 20,000 children malnourished.

Every time I get slightly optimistic about the near future of Central America, some news story comes along and wallops me back to reality. Central America is one of the world's most vulnerable regions when its comes to the effects of climate change. Unstable weather patterns lead to drought and flooding, often at the same time. Roya is devastating the region's coffee crops. I'm not sure if the region has stopped shaking after last week's series of earthquakes and tremors.

Hopefully, the $460 million that the Honduran government will receive from the International Monetary Fund to be invested "largely" on "infrastructure” projects will help.

These will include upgrading Puerto Cortés, the construction of the Amapala port and completing the280 km ‘Dry Canal’ connecting Amapala island in the Pacific with Puerto Castilla, a container port on the Caribbean.

In addition, funds will also be allocated for social programmes and improving some state run companies.

“These new funds will support the economy; we have been offered a facility to undertake a series of important projects for the country to help us in our goals of becoming competitive, because now we are not competing with the region, but with the world,” said the Government in a statement.

In the past, I've said that one of the challenges that the US has in delivering large-scale assistance to Honduras (and Guatemala) is that they do not qualify for a Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact. The MCC is the vehicle through which the US will provide several hundred million dollars to El Salvador (FOMILENIO I and II). While this $460 million might be totally separate with no connection to the MCC at all, I can't help but think that this is a bit of a workaround.

Fleeing the gangs of Honduras for Brooklyn

Alberto Arce has another disturbing story with In Honduran Schools, Gangs are in Control.

Gang prevention police distribute US-funded pamphlets on manners and anger management in about two thirds of the 130 public schools of Tegucigalpa. Gang members, meanwhile, circulate catalogues of their girls offering sexual services for sale.

It can't exactly be said that street gangs are recruiting in Honduran schools because gangs in Honduras don't need to recruit. In a country of limited opportunities, more schoolchildren want to join the violent Mara Salvatrucha, 18th Street and other newly formed gangs than the illegal bands can absorb.

Meanwhile, John Leland picks up on what happens when children escape the violence of Honduran schools for the safety of Brooklyn with Fleeing Violence in Honduras Teenage Boys Seeks Asylum in Brooklyn. Two boys left the violence and death of San Pedro Sula to reunite with their dad who was living in the US after they had heard that minors would be allowed to stay in the country.

In New York, there were adjustments to make. The streets and language were alien. Their father had started a new life, with a wife and a son; his apartment, a studio, was barely big enough for the three of them, let alone the addition of two adolescent boys. Mr. Rodriguez worked in an auto body shop, earning $800 a week — enough to support them, he said, since he had previously been sending money for the boys to Honduras. His wife, from El Salvador, stayed at home.

For many families, reunification comes with tension and recriminations. But if there are stresses in Alejandro’s home, neither he nor his father let on.

Their dad is eligible for relief following President Obama's executive order while the two boys that are adjusting to life in New York have filed petitions for asylum. Fortunately, it sounds like the boys have a good chance of acquiring some manner of staying with their dad in Brooklyn.

Impunity in Honduras Highest in Central America at 96%

This week, a delegation of the Inter American Human Rights Court visited Honduras, and human rights organization have started to present different reports including one proving that impunity for criminal cases has reached the rate of 96 percent. Impunity in the case of human rights trials rate is even worse, 98 percent.

In the three year period from 2010 to 2013, 27,272 homicides were reported in Honduras, while there were only 1,009 court convictions.

Too many recent conversations had revolved around, it's bad but is it just bad or Honduras bad?

Click here for the depressing news.

Coffee vs. Gangs in Honduras

I am cited in the article by Rob Crilly (@robcrilly) on Coffee vs. Gangs in Honduras.

For David, it was the 18th Street Gang who came calling. He started out like so many others, acting as a lookout in his neighborhood, keeping a wary eye out for strangers, other gangs, the police or anything else that caught his attention.

“They get you when you are innocent,” he said. “Then they give you a fashionable watch, a cellphone, some money, clothes. When you are done, you’re 25 years old and at a rank you couldn’t even imagine.”

Go check out the article and read more about Coffee vs. Gangs from Kenco.

Justice Deferred: Rule of Law in Central America

I have a new report on Justice Deferred: Rule of Law in Central America for the World Politics Review where I take more of an historical overview of developments in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

After more than two decades of work by national and international actors, the rule of law in Central America remains weak. While there seems to have been progress in prosecuting high-profile cases, most crimes go unpunished. The rule of law is stronger in the capitals and urban areas than in rural areas, and rarely extends to women, the indigenous and the poor. There is a commitment to free and fair elections in theory, but not so much in practice. Twenty-five years after the end of the Cold War and Central America’s movement toward civilian government, the rule of law remains elusive.

The end to the civil wars in Guatemala and El Salvador as well as the civilian transition in Honduras provided an opportunity for the transformation of the political, social, and economic conditions in each country. Competitive elections began in the 1980s and continued into the 1990s with the transitions of the FMLN and URNG to political parties. There were some successful efforts by civilian leaders to regain control over the military in the 1990s / 2000s in each country and to move the security institutions in the direction of what one would expect of such institutions in democratic states.

However, while we can point to a number of successful rule of law initiatives over the last twenty-five years, there is little evidence of any systematic transformation.

You can go read the longer form piece here (~3,500 words).

US extends TPS to Nicaragua and Honduras

On Friday, Department of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson extended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to eligible nationals of Nicaragua and Honduras. TPS was originally granted to Honduras in 1999 and to Nicaragua in 2001. As a result, thousands of their citizens were provided with work permits and legal documents to remain in the United States even though their papers had expired or they had never received any.

As I wrote in 2011, the US probably won't be ending TPS to Salvadorans, Nicaraguans, or Hondurans anytime soon. All of the people eligible for TPS have been in the country for over a decade. It doesn't make sense to make them go "home." For many, this is their home. I also wrote that the administration should start thinking about how to transition these people to some form of permanent legal status. However, it's now time to move beyond thinking about it and to act on it.

Unfortunately, other than increasing the number of deportations, President Obama doesn't really seem to be concerned with the crisis affecting millions of precariously documented and undocumented migrants in our country. Or maybe he cares and just doesn't think that it is a politically winning strategy to care. We'll learn more after the November elections apparently.

I'd love to give Central America $1 billion

Central American leaders: investment will curb migration north

Northern Triangle Countries Present Their ‘Plan Central America’

Big Central America Aid Request Coming

I'd love to give Central America $1 billion for "Plan Central America." One of the major problems, however, is that the US uses the Millennium Challenge Corporation to identify countries and programs in which to invest hundreds of millions of dollars. Infrastructure projects like those identified by the leaders of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras would be perfect matches.

While El Salvador will have received over $700 million dollars after the completion of a second compact, Honduras and Guatemala do not qualify for compacts. Threshold programs, yes, but not the big money compact investments.

MCC forms partnerships with some of the world’s poorest countries, but only those committed to:

• good governance,

• economic freedom,

• and investments in their citizens.

While the US could come up with another program, one of the difficulties that the US has giving large sums of money to Guatemala and Honduras is that they do not qualify.

The Guatemalan and Honduran governments need to take measures to reduce corruption, support the rule of law, promote and protect and free and transparent media, stop killing their own citizens, etc. The US isn't looking at perfection. They are looking to invest in countries that need the investment and where we have some confidence that hundreds of millions of dollars will do some good. Hence the debate over whether El Salvador has done enough to justify a second $300 million compact.

While there are good reasons to provide these countries with multi-million dollar investments, does anyone sincerely believe that the governments and private sectors in Guatemala and Honduras have earned such an investment?