The Tico Times (Costa Rica)

Seven policemen who watched five teenagers burn to death in a juvenile detention center in Panama after firing teargas into their cell have been sentenced to prison in verdicts welcomed Tuesday by relatives of the victims. The female director of the facility and a civilian guard were also ordered incarcerated over the deaths, which occurred in Panama City on Jan. 9, 2011.

There are more laws on the book than ever in Latin America criminalizing human trafficking, but these laws rarely lead to prosecutions or convictions, according to a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

During the summer of 2014, massive flows of Central American migrants – many unaccompanied children – flooded the southwestern border of the United States. While tens of thousands of migrants have been fleeing violence and poverty in search of new opportunities in the U.S., other migrants from Africa and Asia have been traveling alongside their Central American counterparts for decades.

This year’s highly publicized influx of child migrants from Central America via Mexico to the U.S. border has sparked intense debate about the proliferation of gangs in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. But efforts by the three countries to eliminate gang violence have been ineffective and often counterproductive.