Latin America Security By the Numbers Share This /

This post was compiled by WOLA Intern Lesley Wellener.

• On June 25, 2014, Foreign Policy published its annual “Fragile States Index,” which ranks countries’ stability and security based on 12 political, economic, and social metrics.  The most fragile state, as well as the newest, is South Sudan, which is currently embroiled in a civil war. In Latin America, many countries improved since 2012, though Haiti remained one of the most fragile states, ranked 9th. Uruguay, ranked 155th, and Chile, ranked 153rd, maintained their positions as the region’s least fragile states.
• A report from Insightcrime.org described a new sexual violence law approved with the support of recently reelected President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos.  The law will make acts of sexual violence committed during the country’s armed conflict crimes against humanity.  Santos said that 4,672 women have come forward as having experienced sexual violence due to the country’s armed conflict. The actual number is likely higher. The UN estimates that the number of women affected by sexual violence ranges between 90,000 to 500,000 over the course of the conflict, and that Afro-Colombian women have been disproportionately affected.
• According to an Inter-American Development Bank study cited in the New York Times, Latin America’s middle class has grown 60.3 percent since 2003.  During that period, the population living in poverty declined by 34 percent.  The World Bank estimates that the middle class in Latin America now makes up 30 percent of the population. This growth is on display right now in Brazil, where some of the top World Cup ticket-purchasing countries are Chile, Argentina, Mexico and Colombia. Over 208,000 World Cup tickets were sold in Latin America alone, making it the largest regional ticket market. Even so, progress throughout the region is uneven with many countries in Central America experiencing a decline in the middle class population. Even in countries where the middle class has grown, the definition of the term is broad, often encompassing people barely above the poverty line, earning as little as US$10 per day.
• The UN reports that the land area cultivated with coca, the crop used to make cocaine, fell to a 12-year low in Bolivia last year. This may not mean, though, that Bolivia, the world’s 3rd largest coca producer, is producing less cocaine. The acreage used for coca production shrank by 9 percent from 2012 to 2013, now occupying 29 square miles of land, which, according to the Bolivian government, is 11.5 square miles more than what is needed to meet the demand for traditional, legal coca use. The UN reported that Peru’s coca crop also decreased in the past year.  This was the first  decrease in land area of coca production that Peru–the number one coca producer–had seen in seven years. Colombia, the number-two producer, was virtually unchanged from 2012 cultivation levels. 
• The U.S. Department of Homeland Security released new statistics for unaccompanied minors apprehended at the U.S. border with Mexico. The most shocking statistic is a 99% increase in unaccompanied minor apprehensions between October 1 and June 15 compared to the same time period a year earlier.  Since October 1, 181,724 non-Mexican (mostly Central American) migrants have been apprehended on U.S. soil. Of unaccompanied minors apprehended, 11,436 were from El Salvador, 12,670 were from Guatemala, 15,027 were from Honduras, and 12,146 were from Mexico.