Counternarcotics
Note: the data in this post end at 2009. It will be several months – June for UN data and as late as December for U.S. data – until 2010 drug production statistics become available.
Though cocaine is illegal, some South American indigenous groups have chewed coca leaves for centuries. This traditional use violates the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. Bolivia is trying to amend this international convention, but the United States is blocking its efforts. Adam talks with WOLA's Coletta Youngers about what is happening.
On December 7th, Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Dick Lugar (R-IN) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced the "House initiative sponsored by Congressman Elliot Engel (D-NY) and Connie Mack (R-FL) that was passed by the House of Repr
On October 7th, Mexico's President Felipe Calderón called Tijuana a "clear example" that his four-year-long security strategy against drug cartels in Mexico has a solution. "Tijuana went from being a city seized by terror and focused only on questions of crime to a city motivated by hope and focused on being competitive," Calderón said.
The Mexico Institute at the Smithsonian Institution's Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars and the University of San Diego's Trans-Border Institute held a conference at the Woodrow Wilson Center on October 22 entitled "Shared Responsibility: U.S.
The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center (Center Prodh) released a new report today on human rights violations in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
Just as the State Department is required to certify that Colombia's human rights performance is improving in order to free up a percentage of military aid in the foreign aid budget, the State Department must also report that Mexico's government has met certain human rights requirements in order to free up fifteen percent of military aid in the foreign aid budget for Mexico.
On May 18, 2010, Senator Richard Lugar (R-Indiana), the Republican minority-party leader of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released a detailed report evaluating U.S. aid to Mexico since the 2007 launch of the Mérida Initiative (download the PDF).
Over the past few years, the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have been working with the Colombian government on a new security and development strategy. At times called "Integrated Action," the Colombian government refers to it as the National Consolidation Plan--PCN for its acronym in Spanish.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime released its annual reports on coca cultivation and cocaine production in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador yesterday.