El Salvador: Effecting Change from Within
By Nicole Hertvik, for the Chronicle
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Ten years after a United Nations-brokered peace plan brought an end to El Salvador’s twelve-year civil war, the institutionalized human rights violations associated with that war have been drastically reduced.
While the United Nations Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL) was successful in addressing politically-motivated human rights violations, a new threat has risen out of the ashes of the war - urban violence - keeping fear and insecurity at the centre of life in El Salvador. Today, crime is cited as the major concern of most Salvadorans.
When peacekeepers went into the country in 1989, the violent war was still raging. Rooted in a system of persistent social and economic inequality, the fighting between government forces and the revolutionary Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN) left 75,000 dead and over a million displaced.
As agreed in the 1990 Geneva Agreement, one of the central aims of the peace process would be “to guarantee unrestricted respect for human rights”. At a later stage, then Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar established the Truth Commission, which was authorized to investigate the starkest human rights violations of the civil war. While conducting its work, the investigative body received more than 22,000 complaints of extrajudicial executions, torture and forced disappearances that had occurred between January 1980 and July 1991. Ninety-five percent of the violent acts documented were found to have been committed by the military, government security forces and death squads. Intimidation, death threats, executions and disappearances were found to be common tools used against opposition voices, human rights activists and suspected rebels. In addition, the judicial system was found to be “incapable of fairly assessing and carrying out punishment”.
Since the Truth Commission had no authority to prosecute or punish offenders, they were limited to making recommendations. However, the recommendations made in its report met with stiff criticism. Many of those accused retained high-level positions in various government offices. And to the chagrin of all involved, the day after the report was made public on 15 March 1993, Salvadoran President Alfredo Cristiani announced his intention to ask the National Assembly to pass an amnesty law which would favour everyone named in the report.
Although the limitations restricted the changes ONUSAL could bring to the country, the Mission contributed successfully to eradicating political violence. By the time the Commission’s report was published, enforced disappearances, torture and killings had been nearly eliminated. Government security forces had been abolished and a new security force - the National Civilian Police - was being trained on human rights by the United Nations.
Gang Violence in El Salvador
Urban violence, one manifestation of the gross economic and social inequality in which Salvadorans live, is certainly the most prevalent in El Salvador. The largest contributing factor is the surge of gangs that grew in its urban areas following the end of the civil war, when many families who had immigrated to the United States lost their refugee status. Children of many such families had grown up in inner city neighbourhoods where they faced discrimination and learned gang violence as a means of survival and acceptance. After 1992, the Immigration and Naturalization Service policy on Salvadoran refugees shifted and families were sent back home. Young men, who had been raised entirely in the United States, were greeted with suspicion upon returning to an unfamiliar country coming out of a bloody war.
Although the existence of gangs in El Salvador dates back to the early 1970s, these returning refugees introduced a new style of gang violence into one of Latin America’s most violent countries. Strangers in their own country, they were received by locals with fear, suspicion and discrimination. With limited access to training and guidance, and few opportunities to better their lives, they survived the only way they knew how. Today, gang involvement is on the rise. Police reports estimate that 20,000 young people (out of a population of 6.4 million) are gang members. Gang violence accounts for a high percentage of homicides in a country with one of the world’s highest homicide rates.
According to a report published by the Institute of Public Opinion at the University of Central America in San Salvador, the root cause of gang violence is marginalization and growing social and economic problems.
A San Salvador resident stated that “the Government responds with violence and repression, which only fuels the anger. It’s a never-ending problem.” Statistics concur. A poll of former and current gang members conducted by the Institute found that the major reason cited for joining gangs was to “have a place to hang out” (46%), while the major disadvantages were death or jail (46%). When asked about their aspirations, 30 per cent of respondents listed finding a job - no easy task in a country where 48 per cent live below the poverty line.
Youth violence has a long history in El Salvador. During the war, an estimated 80 per cent of government troops and 20 per cent of FMLN recruits were under 18 years of age. A report by Child Soldiers, a non-profit organization, suggests that “reintegration of former child soldiers has not been fully successful due to lack of support from the international community and lack of follow-up at the international level”. A 1999 report of the UN Children’s Fund shows that 61 per cent of FMLN children were not integrated into the demobilization programme and only 5 per cent of those who entered completed the education programme. |
While setbacks did occur, such as a slower than hoped-for change in the judicial system, ONUSAL left El Salvador secure in the knowledge that rather than an institutionalized part of the political system, human rights abuses were anomalies in a system bent on reforming itself. But while instances of political violence were decreasing, another kind was growing in its shadow. Geoff Thale of the Washington Office on Latin America says: “Although ‘classic’ human rights abuses like execution and disappearances are not much of a problem in El Salvador today, the country is facing many challenges centred on economic and development issues.” He classifies urban violence as one of the most pressing problems. His view is echoed by the World Bank, which lists “micro-insecurity”, or urban street crime, as a problem of epidemic proportions.
Many international non-governmental organizations are currently focusing their work on economic development issues, but the resources devoted to El Salvador have been greatly reduced since the end of the civil war. Where human rights violations, such as extrajudicial murders and disappearances, once made headlines, the world is largely unaware of the country’s new insecurity. Changing geopolitical conditions after the fall of the Soviet Union ended geo-strategic interest in the outcome of the war, when the United States was El Salvador’s largest donor. Several international human rights organizations based in the United States and Canada reported that their programme for El Salvador has been cut entirely or greatly reduced in the last five years, most citing budget constraints and a need to prioritize more high profile situations like Colombia and Haiti.
The United Nations currently maintains several programmes in El Salvador. The UN Development Programme and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights are involved in projects aimed at strengthening local institutions to confront social ills. In recent years, UNDP has worked closely with the Salvadoran Human Rights Ombudsman, a body created under the peace accord, on public security projects. Both UN bodies centre their efforts on equipping the Ombudsman to deal with police violence. The High Commissioner has recently offered human rights training for judges, lawyers and police officers. The work of the United Nations continues in El Salvador long after the ONUSAL mandate ended. When Mission members look back on their efforts, they express mixed views as to their success. Most agree that the root causes of the conflict-poverty and inequality - remain intact despite previous efforts to address them. Maria Maldonado, former Deputy Director of the Americas and Europe Division of the UN Department of Political Affairs (DPA), agrees that violence has not disappeared, but sees the shift from public to private violence as a step forward in removing violence and abuse from the lexicon of sanctioned behaviour in the country.
Many participants reflecting on ONUSAL - the first UN mission to put such emphasis on post-conflict peace-building - see it as a learning experience. “We carried lessons learned in El Salvador to places like Guatemala and Bosnia”, Ms. Maldonado continued, referring to two subsequent UN peacekeeping missions. The lessons learned “helped us to begin subsequent missions with greater efficacy”. Most agree that the major lesson is the need to involve local agencies at the initial stages of a mission.
Martha Doggett, also of the Americas and Europe Division, agrees. She labels the Mission a success, but laments its failure to emphasize local institution-building early on. “The longer I stay involved in these issues from the UN perspective, the more convinced I become that our job from day one is to work ourselves out of a job”, she explained, emphasizing the need for local institutions to be able to carry out changes once the assisting body leaves. “On human rights issues, we could have done more from the beginning to build institutional capacity in El Salvador”, Ms. Doggett added.
According to Reed Brody, head of the ONUSAL human rights components from 1994 to 1995, building democratic institutions within El Salvador did become a priority during the peace accord implementation process.
Much of his efforts centred on strengthening the new Ombudsman and training local non-governmental organizations “to be a watchdog force in the country as it moved into a post-war situation”.
At the root of the civil war and today’s urban violence, however, lies the same problem of economic inequality. Denise Cook of the DPA Decolonization Unit took a somewhat more pessimistic stance than her counterparts. “The root causes and inequalities of the war are still there today”, she stressed. Susan Burgerman of the Columbia University Latin American and Iberian Institute sets the issue in a wider spectrum. “No, the UN didn’t reform the political elite. But effecting fundamental social change wasn’t what they set out to do. That remains to be done.”
Voices in and out of El Salvador express an awareness of the roots of El Salvador’s woes. Salvadorans are working to effect change from within. Until drastic economic reforms are made, enabling El Salvador to change the root of its problems, the international community should carry out the lessons learned from ONUSAL and support local institution-building to the extent of their capabilities.
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