IRTF News

Countries in Latin America came under particularly harsh criticism in the U.S. State Department’s annual report on human rights, with allies such as Mexico and adversaries including Nicaragua facing similar opprobrium. The report zeroed in on many of the widely denounced human rights abuses, including the killing of journalists, discrimination against LGBTQ people, targeted murders of women, and widespread violence fueled by drug traffickers, but largely ignored by the government of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The annual reports examine actions from the previous year.

As more and more Haitians seek refuge in the United States, refugee advocate Marleine Bastien says they're not being given a fair shake. The number of Haitian refugees arriving in the United States is on the rise as people try to flee an increasingly desperate situation in their home country, which has survived several major hurricanes and epidemics in recent years, only be thrown into political chaos after the assassination of its president last year. Unfortunately, once officials find them, most of them are deported in complete denial of their basic rights of due process. For the past few months, especially since September 2021, the Biden administration has used a health policy, Title 42, to deport Black Haitian refugees without due process. At the same time that they're deporting Haitians, the Biden administration has promised to bring in up to 100,000 refugees from Ukraine.

Corrupt state officials and organized crime factions are to blame for Mexico’s soaring number of enforced disappearances, whose victims increasingly include children – some as young as 12, according to a new UN investigation. Just over 95,000 people were registered as disappeared at the end of November 2021. Of those, 40,000 were added in the past five years, according to the new report by the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances. “Impunity in Mexico is a structural feature that favours the reproduction and cover-up of enforced disappearances and creates threats and anxiety to the victims, those defending and promoting their rights, public servants searching for the disappeared and investigating their cases, and society as a whole.”

As part of the Unearthing the Real Root Causes of Mass Migration from Central America Delegation organized by solidarity organizations this spring, U.S. Congresspeople Ilhan Omar (MN-05), Cori Bush (MO-01), and Jamaal Bowman (NY-16) visited the Fraternal Black Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH). OFRANEH and the three members of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus made connections about the impacts of the war on drugs, militarization, and state violence in Black communities in Honduras and in U.S. cities alike. Additionally, a delegation from the Miskitu people, who were victims of the May 2012 U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) killings in Ahuas, joined OFRANEH in addressing the delegation.

As criminal groups battle for control over Mexican territory, the displaced are becoming increasingly visible, in towns such as Coahuayana and at the U.S. border. An estimated 20,000 people have fled violence in the past year in Michoacán state, roughly the size of West Virginia. Thousands more have abandoned their homes in other states like Zacatecas and Guerrero. Forced displacement is generally associated with armed conflict — it’s been a feature of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Yet it’s become such a problem in ostensibly peaceful Mexico that the country’s Senate is considering legislation to offer humanitarian aid to victims. Security officials describe the conflict as a battle between Jalisco and a rival cartel network to control the region, a hub of marijuana and methamphetamine production. But the accounts of the displaced underscore how unconventional this war actually is. At stake are not just drug routes, but timber, minerals and fruit plantations. In many cases, the armed groups have ties to local governments, business groups and the police.

For those on the frontlines of Mexico's drug war, the ubiquity of American-made weapons flowing across the border has long been a problem. Mexican police say that criminals and gangs in US border towns have ready access to weapons purchased and smuggled across the border. Mexico's National Guard - which is largely responsible for stemming the flow of weapons into Mexico - could not be reached for comment. Mexican officials at various levels of government, however, have repeatedly vowed to clamp down on the flow of weapons coming across the border, referring to the effort as a "national priority". These efforts occasionally net large quantities of weapons and lead to arrests. Between 1 January 2019 and January 2021 alone, Mexico's Milenio Televisión reported that 1,585 people were detained for weapons trafficking, over 90% of whom were US citizens. In the same time frame, official data compiled by Stop US Arms to Mexico - a project aimed at reducing illegal weapons in the country - shows that 11,613 weapons were seized by the army, a small fraction of what is believed to be on Mexico's streets.

On April 1, PBI-Honduras tweeted: “PBI accompanies ASODEBICOQ [the Association for the Defense of Common Goods of Quimistan] during the official presentation of declarations of Forest Protection Zone over 4 micro-watersheds in Quimistán. We celebrate these declarations and highlight the protection work of the communities as well as the defense work of ASODEBICOQ.”