IRTF News

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights called on the government of El Salvador Thursday to respect human rights, after authorities declared a state of emergency and rounded up 14,000 suspected gang members. The arrests often appear arbitrary, according to the commission, part of the Organization of American States. The commission warned the government that even with the decree, “its power is not unlimited, because it has the duty at all times to act in accordance with applicable rules and respect the rights of all of those under its jurisdiction.”

In the 21st century, the women’s movement has undoubtedly made huge gains at parliamentary level, yet it has also made a big impact in other areas of society. One of the most important actors in this regard is the Rural Workers Association (ATC). The most essential component of Nicaragua’s economy has for centuries been its agricultural sector. Prior to the revolution, all available fertile land was forcibly converted into vast monocultural cash-crop plantations and worked by the local population, be that slaves, Indigenous people, or mestizos. When men went to fight in the mountains during the US-funded counter-revolution in the 1980s, women took on agricultural jobs that had been traditionally held by men—carrying out the field work, driving tractors, applying inputs, tending to the animals—in addition to all of the traditional housework and childrearing. This was an important moment that showed that women too could carry out agricultural activities other than harvesting, breaking off from traditional machista ideas about the division of agricultural labor.

The National Congress decided to approve the repeal of the Employment and Economic Development Zones, ZEDE, for projects that divide the country and sell the territories, directly attacking national sovereignty. The Employment and Economic Development Zones are widely rejected by the Honduran population. It became a campaign promise to end their use, today fulfilled, of the government of Xiomara Castro Sarmiento.

Please see a summary of the letters we sent to heads of state and other high-level officials in Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, urging their swift action in response to human rights abuses occurring in their countries.  We join with civil society groups in Latin America to (1) protect people living under threat, (2) demand investigations into human rights crimes, and (3) bring human rights criminals to justice…..IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) volunteers write six letters in response to urgent human rights cases each month. We send copies of these letters to US ambassadors, embassy human rights officers, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, regional representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and desk officers at the US State Department. To read the letters, see https://www.irtfcleveland.org/content/rrn , or ask us to mail you hard copies.

Over the last decade, a growing number of American cities and states have restricted the information local law enforcement departments can exchange with immigration authorities. But new documents reveal that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) has tapped a network of private technology companies to skirt such sanctuary policies, facilitating access to “real time” information about incarcerations and jail bookings. Several US jurisdictions with sanctuary policies have started to ask questions about Ice’s use of tech solutions and loopholes. In Chicago, members of the Cook county board of commissioners in April requested an investigation into whether Ice’s use of data brokers violated sanctuary policies.

Over 65 U.S.-based human rights, faith, immigrant rights, diaspora and international solidarity organizations released a joint statement expressing “profound concern” about the Bukele administration’s mass arrests in El Salvador and reports of human rights violations at the hands of state security forces. Since early April, over 12,000 people have been arrested without warrants, predominantly in marginalized communities, in response to a tragic spike in homicides; many arrests have been denounced by witnesses and family members as arbitrary in nature. As the 15-day administrative period for which people can be held without charges under a 30-day State of Exception comes to close for many, the groups are calling on the Salvadoran government to reinstate due process, lest a door be opened to “profound and lasting injustice.” 

Top United States officials are in Panama for a summit on migration in the Americas, where migrant rights groups say US policies exacerbate the dangers faced by migrants and asylum seekers heading north. The US secretaries of state and homeland security are joining their counterparts from 20 other countries in the western hemisphere for a ministerial conference on migration on Tuesday and Wednesday in Panama City. However, migrant rights advocates contend that security and deterrence policies pushed by the US and other destination countries aggravate the risks migrants and asylum seekers face in transit through the region.

Colombia’s opposition and anti-corruption advocates have sued President Ivan Duque for allegedly trying to influence the May 29 presidential election. Senator Ivan Cepeda said last week that he would sue the president and seven mayors for abusing their position for electoral purposes. The Anticorruption Institute, a non-government organization, said Monday that it sued before the Cundinamarca Administrative Tribunal for his allegedly illegal participation in electoral politics.