El Salvador Perspectives

A report issued earlier this year offers an important view into the problem of families who must flee their homes as a result of gang and other violence in El Salvador.   The report on the situation of forced displacement through generalized violence in El Salvador  (available only in Spanish) was prepared by the Roundtable of Civil Society against Forced Displacement, made up of several civil society and church groups who have tried to provide humanitarian assistance to these families. The report notes that although international agencies had tallied some 289,000 internally displaced persons in 2014, the Salvadoran government was in denial of the problem and offered little if any support to such families: The phenomenon of internal displacement is an effect of a situation of generalized violence in El Salvador. Hundreds of Salvadoran families flee their homes to protect their lives and physical integrity, many of whom end up seeking international protection outside the co...

The US first started paying attention to the flight of Central Americans from violence in the Northern Triangle when thousands of unaccompanied minors began showing up on the southern border.   The primary response of the US has been deterrence -- public service announcements and education campaigns about the dangers of the route north, expanded detention facilities for mothers and children, and round-ups and deportations of families back to Central America.   In addition, the US has proposed two programs purported to be humanitarian responses to the flow of refugees.   The first to be announced was the Central American Minors Program .    Under this program, parents or guardians in the US can apply for their children in El Salvador, Honduras or Guatemala to receive refugee status and travel to the US.    A key part of the program is that children are interviewed in Central America rather than making the treacherous journey north.   (A flow c...

The World Day of the Refugee was June 20.    In recognition of that day, I plan to spend the next few posts on this blog on the refugee crisis created by the criminal gang violence in El Salvador as well as Guatemala and Honduras. An article from  Insight Crime  describes the nature of the crisis: A new United Nations report highlights skyrocketing rates of forced displacement in Central America's Northern Triangle region, attributing the trend in large part to rampant organized crime related violence.  In its latest annual Global Trends report ( pdf ), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says the number of asylum-seekers from the Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador rose from 20,900 in 2012 to 109,800 in 2015 -- a more than five-fold increase.     The report suggests a toxic mix of local gangs and transnational drug trafficking groups is driving much of the displacemen...

700,000 people, or one out of every nine people in El Salvador, suffer from food insecurity, especially in the country's rural areas according to international organizations working in El Salvador .   Droughts, the El Niño phenomenon, and the impact of roya (coffee rust fungus), have had a serious negative affect on families incomes and harvests over the past three years. The effects are widespread, touching 104 of the country's municipalities especially in the east.  In 24 municipalities, almost 20,000 families are receiving direct food aid.   The aid is provided by the World Food Program and the National Council on Food Security. The recent periods of drought have reduced flow rates in El Salvador's rivers by as much as 20 to 60%, and declining as much as 90% in the eastern region.  According to OxFam, which works with populations in the eastern departments of Morazan, San Miguel and Usulutan, there has been a 40% reduction in access to water.  One...

El Salvador's Central Reserve Bank (BCR) reported this week that remittances which Salvadorans outside of the country send back to their families in El Salvador grew strongly during the first five months of the year.    Total remittances so far in 2016 have been $1.84 billion, up 6.8% from the year before.   This is impressive considering that both the US economy and the Salvadoran economy are experiencing annual growth rates of 2% or less. Just in the month of May, family remittances totaled $412 million, the highest total recorded for a month of May.    May is usually a month with high levels of remittance activity as Salvadorans abroad send money back for Mother's Day, according to the BCR. The BCR also reported on the economic activity of Salvadoran born women living in the United States: On average Salvadoran-born women in the US send back 20.8% of their income to El Salvador, a greater percentage than sent back by men. 69%  of Salvadoran-bor...

Much of Latin America saw progress in lifting people out of poverty over the last decade.   Yet a significant number of those people remain vulnerable to falling back into poverty according to a new report from the United Nations Development Program: In the report titled Multidimensional Progress: Well-being beyond income , UNDP expresses particular concern over the 25 to 30 million people in the region—more than a third of those who left poverty since 2003 — who risk falling back into poverty. Many are youth and women, with precarious employment in the service sector. They are part of a larger group of over 220 million people (38% of the population, or almost two in every five in the region) who are vulnerable: officially they are not poor (living on less than US$4/day) but have been unable to rise to the middle class (living on more than $10/day).  The factors that pushed people out of poverty are different from those that prevent them from falling back, the HDR stresses...

They are images that hearken back to the bloody years of El Salvador's civil war.   Heavily armed troops deployed in front of National Palace and Metropolitan Cathedral in San Salvador's historic center.   On Tuesday, the government of Salvador Sánchez Cerén made a public show of the deployment of "Task Force Historic Center" which includes 800 military and police. From the Facebook page of the Salvadoran armed forces : The historic Center Task Force was deployed this day in 29 sectors with the objective of reducing the activity of criminal structures and bands of organized crime that affect the citizenry and the commercial activity in the zones involved.   All this done through joint permanent patrols by foot and vehicle, the capture of criminals in the act or per judicial order, guaranteeing with this free movement and healthy living in the Salvadoran capital. This deployment is part of the ongoing "exceptional measures" which the Sánche...