Caribbean & Central America - March 2018 (ISSN 1741-4458)

Central America’s Northern Triangle, comprising El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, is the most violent region in the world (outside of war zones), an infamous distinction it has held for the past several years – as most recently highlighted by the Geneva-based NGO Small Arms Survey’s latest report, ‘Global Violent Deaths, 2017’. Yet, Nicaragua continues to boast among the lowest homicide rates in the region. Here we consider the reasons for this apparent achievement.

Published in December 2017, the Global Violent Deaths report contained some disturbing findings, showing that in 2016 the global homicide rose for the first time since 2004. Of the 560,000 people who died violent deaths in 2016, approximately 385,000 (68%) were victims of intentional homicides, not related to conflict. While homicides rose, the global conflict death rate continued to decline. Three of the five countries with the highest homicide rates – El Salvador, Honduras, and Venezuela – are located in Latin America. The other two top-five countries, Syria and Afghanistan, are active conflict zones. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines a homicide epidemic as more than 10 homicides per 100,000 people.

El Salvador has had the world’s highest homicide rate for the past few years, registering 81.2 homicides per 100,000 in 2016 (see the earlier article in this issue 'EL SALVADOR: The limits of mano dura' for discussion of how subsequent claims of progress have been subject to doubt). The Small Arms Survey’s report shows that in 2016 Honduras and Venezuela were tied for second place with a homicide rate of 59 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. Brazil’s homicide rate is lower, but it has the highest number of violent deaths in the world, even when including those countries involved in conflict.

A violent mix of transnational youth gangs, drug trafficking and other organised crime, and state repression have plagued Central America for more than a decade. The region’s violence is a leading cause of forced migration. The so-called child migrant crisis of 2014, when more than 70,000 children from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras were apprehended at the US border, was driven primarily by this violence. Even in typically tranquil Costa Rica, the homicide rate has doubled since 2002 reaching 11.8 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2016. Costa Rican officials blame the increase in organised crime.

By comparison, Nicaragua’s 2016 homicide rate was seven per 100,000 inhabitants, down from eight per 100,000 in 2015 and 13 per 100,000 in 2010. With only 460 homicides in the entire country in 2016, 65% of the country’s municipalities registered zero or one homicide for the year. In 2016, only Argentina (6.6), Ecuador (5.6) and Chile (3.6) had lower homicide rates than Nicaragua in Latin America. This is a remarkable accomplishment for the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, where resources are often stretched thin. It’s even more remarkable when considering the country’s legacy of conflict and its shared border with two of the world’s most violent countries.

Anecdotal evidence has previously put this relative lack of violence down to a result of the war and violence fatigue. Simply put, Nicaraguans were tired of violence. But, of course, Nicaragua’s neighbours also suffered high levels of violence during their civil wars and their populations were equally tired of violence. It’s clear that this fails to explain Nicaragua’s relatively low homicide rate.

Analysts attribute much of Nicaragua’s success to its professionalised police force and community policing model, which enables citizens to have direct contact with the country’s police. Nicaragua’s police force is very much a legacy of the Sandinista revolution, which dismantled the repressive National Guard of the dictatorship led by the Somoza family (1936-1979) and replaced it with the Sandinista People’s Army and Sandinista Police. A reformed Nicaraguan National Police (PNN) emerged after the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN)’s 1990 electoral loss, but the organisation’s emphasis on community engagement and progressive ideology remained intact.

While governments in Northern Triangle countries have adopted repressive policing measures, such as ‘mano dura’ (iron fist) in El Salvador and Honduras, the PNN has instead focused primarily on prevention. Neighbourhood watch groups interface with the police to help identify at-risk youths and potential sources of violence. Not only does this encourage high levels of trust in the police (PNN chief Aminta Granera has one of the highest approval ratings for a public official for years), but it enables police and communities to work together to identify and solve problems together. Nicaragua’s community policing model has been so widely regarded as successful that other countries have sought advice on how to implement it in their countries.

Organised crime groups, particularly those that control territory, have been less of a threat in Nicaragua thanks to the country’s ‘firewall’ strategy that emphasises border security. That said, drug trafficking poses a major security threat to Nicaragua, particularly in the Caribbean Coast autonomous regions. High rates of poverty and unemployment, lower police presence, geographic isolation, and an extensive coastline have made the Caribbean Coast an ideal location for drug traffickers. Homicide rates are considerably higher in the Caribbean Coast regions than in the rest of the country. In 2016 the homicide rate in the South Atlantic autonomous region (Raas) was 33 per 100,000 inhabitants.

Joint interdiction efforts between the US Coast Guard and the Nicaraguan Navy have been combined with demand reduction, vocational training, and drug treatment programs – again emphasising the proactive and preventative approach to security. But there also have been some revelations that government officials have worked with traffickers to mitigate levels of violence in the region. In 2012 a supreme electoral court (CSE) alternate magistrate, Julio César Osuna, was convicted of using his position to sell fake identity documents to drug traffickers, as well as money laundering and participating in organised crime. There were other allegations that the country’s judicial system has been penetrated by traffickers, as judges had either reduced sentences for or released those convicted of drug trafficking. Despite receiving a sentence of 23 years, Osuna was released in 2015 on the condition that he appear at prison once a month.

Also indicative of these concerns, the most recent (2017) US State Department’s International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) released in March 2017 highlights that in 2016 the national police’s internal inspection office publicised several cases of corruption within the police’s anti-drug unit in Managua that were under investigation. In Rivas department, three police officers were discharged and one prosecuted for drug-related charges. In both the Managua and Rivas cases, the incidents included collusion between officers and drug traffickers, tampering and concealment of evidence, and missing seized assets (money and equipment).

• Police involvement?

The most recent (2017) US State Department’s International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) released in March 2017 notes that two former police officers publicly accused current members of the police of corruption in 2016, including stealing illegal drug shipments and money from drug traffickers. In addition, two senior police officials in the north-central region were killed under unclear circumstances – one in what appeared to be a targeted killing. Independent security analysts have noted that prosecution of police corruption cases has been isolated to low-ranked officers, despite allegations of involvement by higher ranking officials.

Other factors

While Nicaragua’s community policing strategy and philosophy has been an important factor in maintaining its low crime rate, there are also other important factors that set Nicaragua apart from some of its neighbours.

First, unlike El Salvador and Honduras, Nicaragua has not suffered from transnational gang violence. This is largely due to differences in migration patterns. Unlike countries in the Northern Triangle, relatively few Nicaraguans migrated to the US during the 1980s and early 1990s. In fact, Nicaraguans make up only 7.6%, roughly 260,000, of the Central American migrant population in the US. Only 40% of Nicaraguan migrants emigrate to the US. Most have typically migrated south to Costa Rica, including during the Contra War in the 1980s.

Additionally, Nicaraguans who came to the US in the 1980s typically settled in Miami, while Salvadorans favoured Los Angeles, where they encountered a violent gang culture that was later exported back to the isthmus.

Finally, gun ownership is far lower in Nicaragua than in the Northern Triangle and a lower proportion of homicides in Nicaragua are committed with firearms. Only about 42% of violent deaths in Nicaragua involve firearms compared with more than 80% in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Registering a firearm in Nicaragua is also a fairly complicated process, requiring a psychological evaluation, certification by both police and courts that there is no criminal record or prosecution in process, completion of a gun training programme, and authorisation from the local police.

Additional problems

While Nicaragua has one of the lowest homicide rates in the Americas, it has been less successful in combatting other forms of violence. Incidents of gender-based violence in Nicaragua are among the highest in the hemisphere and the issue was singled out in the most recent (February 2018) annual report by the international human rights NGO Amnesty International (AI). The AI report noted that gender-based killings became increasingly brutal, with 55 gender-based killings of women between January and December 2017, according to the NGO Catholics for the Right to Decide. AI also found that the killings were more brutal than in previous years and tended to be committed by perpetrators acting in groups.

By some estimates, as many as half of all Nicaraguan women will experience gender-based violence in their lifetimes. Critics point to a heavily machista culture and a lack of political will and finances. Shortly after it was passed in 2012, key provisions of the Law Against Violence Against Women, Law 779, were struck down by the courts. The country’s women-only police stations, established in 1993 to encourage women to report gender-based violence, all closed in 2016 due to budget cuts.

The AI 2018 report also highlighted that Nicaragua – where abortion remains banned in all circumstances – continued to have one of the highest teenage pregnancy and maternal mortality rates in the Americas region, according to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). Almost 30% of Nicaraguan women give birth before the age of 18 – the highest teen and adolescent pregnancy rate in Latin America. Nearly half of those pregnancies occur in girls aged 10-14. Nicaragua’s 2014 teen pregnancy rate among 15-19 year-olds (89.63 per 1,000 girls) was significantly higher than the more violent El Salvador (65.65) and Honduras (65.56). The overwhelming majority of adolescent and teen pregnancies are the result of rape. According to Nicaragua’s Institute of Legal Medicine, most of the reports received in 2015 dealt with sexual violence against minors. Impunity for crimes committed against women and girls is high.

Nicaragua’s impressive security record can be attributed to factors such as the success of its professionalised national police and its approach to community-based policing, historical migration patterns, low prevalence of firearms. But it is necessary to delve beyond the country’s homicide and drug interdiction data to get a true picture of the country’s success in combatting crime. As the data on gender-based violence suggest, there’s still much important work to be done.

• Amending the law on femicide

The February 2018 report by Amnesty International (AI) notes that in June 2017 the national assembly approved an amendment to the Comprehensive Law on Violence against Women; the amendment reduced the scope of the definition of femicide to the private sphere, limiting the crime to relations between spouses and partners. Critics said the new definition denied the reality of femicides, which were also committed in public places.