NGOs and Academia

A sweeping new report by 17 organizations across Latin America, the United States and Canada calls attention to how drug policies have infringed on human rights. The study covers a wide range of issues, from lengthy prison sentences for minor drug offenders to prohibitive drug policies that run counter to international human rights and highlights how harsh drug policies often have a disproportionate effect on the most vulnerable sectors of society.

The United States and Mexico have apprehended nearly 1 million Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and Honduran migrants since 2010, deporting more than 800,000 of them, including more than 40,000 children. While the United States led in pace and number of apprehensions of Central Americans in 2010-2014, Mexico pulled ahead in 2015. Amid increasingly muscular enforcement by Mexico, U.S. apprehensions of Central Americans for fiscal 2015 to date have fallen by more than half compared to the prior year. Many of those who previously would have made it to the U.S. border and been apprehended by the Border Patrol now are being intercepted by Mexican authorities.

The Secretary-General welcomes the announcements of the intention of the Government of Colombia and the FARC-EP to put in place new measures to de-escalate the current fighting in Colombia and to accelerate the negotiations in order to reach a peace agreement as soon as possible.

While the U.S. government has some of the most comprehensive laws and regulations controlling arms exports, this briefing paper shows that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is missing some key controls to prevent the use of intermediaries with problematic backgrounds, particularly when DoD employs one of its new congressionally approved authorities to train and equip foreign security forces.