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Date: November 22, 2024 Fri
Time: 12:04 pm
Time: 12:04 pm
Results for criminal justice reform (guatemala)
2 results foundAuthor: Hernandez, Iduvina Title: A Long Road: Progress and Challenges in Guatemala's Intelligence Reform Summary: High levels of crime in Guatemala — including common crime, organized crime, drug trafficking, and youth gang violence — have once again brought debates over intelligence and security issues to the front page. Controlling crime and violence will require effective, strategic policies. Within the conceptual framework of a model of “democratic security,” Guatemala’s 1996 Peace Accords sought to implement more effective ways of combating and preventing crime and violence. At the same time, the Accords sought to establish mechanisms that would transform the security and intelligence apparatus to ensure that security demands would not threaten human rights and/or individual freedoms. This report describes the current state of intelligence system reform nine years after the signing of the Peace Accords and argues that the process of reforming the old intelligence structures has produced mixed results. Since the ceasefire almost a decade ago, successive governments have taken steps to dismantle the old security structures and establish new ones. The Óscar Berger Administration (2004–present) has made significant progress toward shrinking the size of the military. However, other important steps must still be taken to fully comply with the spirit of the Peace Accords and carry out a complete restructuring of the intelligence system. The absence of checks and balances, transparency, and an agreed upon set of norms has allowed the various intelligence entities to continue operating under only rudimentary legal controls, which do not necessarily guarantee that they will operate within the rule of law. Furthermore, the fact that intelligence operations are not fully regulated leaves citizens vulnerable to having their rights and liberties violated. Before this report went to press, two competing legislative initiatives on the Intelligence Framework Law were presented in the Guatemalan Congress. One of them represents a serious challenge to the consolidation of a democratic security system. The legal framework and restructuring of intelligence services proposed by the initiative not only violate commitments made in the Peace Accords but also give excessive power and a disturbing degree of autonomy to intelligence structures. Details: Washington, DC: Washington Office on Latin America, 2005. 16p. Source: WOLA Special Report: Internet Resource: Accessed March 10, 2012 at http://www.wola.org/publications/a_long_road_progress_and_challenges_in_guatemala_s_intelligence_reform Year: 2005 Country: Guatemala URL: http://www.wola.org/publications/a_long_road_progress_and_challenges_in_guatemala_s_intelligence_reform Shelf Number: 124415 Keywords: Criminal Justice Reform (Guatemala)Intelligence (Guatemala)Intelligence Gathering (Guatemala) |
Author: Briscoe, Ivan Title: Breaking the wave: critical steps in the fight against crime in Guatemala Summary: The new government led by retired General Otto Pérez Molina that is to take office in Guatemala on January 14, 2012 will encounter a familiar set of torments in its in-tray. Whether measured in terms of murder rate, possession of firearms, or the extent of territory under the supposed control of armed criminal groups, this Central American nation stands at the forefront of a crisis of insecurity, in a region that is one of the most violent and lawless in the world. But the portrayal of a country that is a victim to the intrusion of Mexican cartels and is unable to provide basic justice to its citizens no longer represents the whole picture. For over four years, the Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a UN body, has spurred a series of criminal investigations compromising some of the country’s most powerful figures – despite occasional setbacks. A new head of the national prosecution service has managed to shape an extraordinary turnaround, ordering the arrest of several ‘untouchable’ druglords, as well as a former president and general accused of atrocities during the civil war. Drug interdictions have soared; the murder rate has fallen, albeit slightly; even impunity rates for serious crimes are down. This progress cannot hide the dilapidation of the country’s security and justice institutions, notably its police and prisons, nor the acute fear of crime that is felt by many Guatemalans. But in combination with the Central American region’s determination to address its vulnerabilities to transnational crime, it does offer some reason to believe that the crisis may be contained. Pérez Molina, head of the right-wing Patriotic Party, has also made security the overriding imperative for his government. For the moment, however, both Guatemalan civil society and foreign governments are waiting to see how this veteran of military intelligence and the 1980s counter-insurgency – a particularly brutal period of the country’s 36-year civil war – will behave once in power. He pledged repeatedly during the campaign to assign inter-institutional ‘task forces’ to combat major criminal phenomena. His concern over territory that is under the control of drug traffickers may also see much deeper involvement of the armed forces in crimefighting operations. At the same time, there is uncertainty as to whether the new president will respect recent reforms in the police and prosecution service, honour the mandate of the CICIG, or reappoint veterans of the counter-insurgency to key posts in the security apparatus. Even if the president avoids militarizing the country’s security strategy, he will still have to deal with the chronic flaws in the country’s criminal justice system – weaknesses that have emerged time and again since the 1996 peace accords, and have scuppered previous efforts at reform and modernization funded by the donor community. Part of this vulnerability can be attributed to the character of Guatemala’s political system, which has proved extremely permeable to business and criminal interests. Even the outgoing president, Álvaro Colom, failed on several occasions to live up to his commitments to a stronger security system, either by appointing shady operators, cutting security budgets, or by ignoring the CICIG. In addition to political issues, this paper discusses in depth three chronic weaknesses in the criminal justice system that together pose major obstacles to successful reform. Efforts to strengthen criminal justice have so far failed to keep up with the rapid evolution of criminal behaviour, particularly in narco-trafficking and in the composition of local protection rackets. • Reforms have not managed to introduce effective systems of internal discipline and oversight in security and justice institutions, which have been repeatedly infiltrated by criminal activity. • They have not latched on to a credible approach towards ensuring they are sustainable over the long term – either through proper donor coordination, tax reform, constitutional change or genuine public support. On the basis of these three major flaws, the report ends by outlining a comprehensive strategy for security and justice reform that would incorporate each of these issues by stressing the need for greater investigative sophistication, tighter internal controls, and, over the longer term, a route-map towards fiscal, constitutional and social change. The proposal is also grounded in a pragmatic understanding of Guatemalan institutions, emphasizing the need to support bodies that perform well, thereby spreading good practice by example rather than by rhetoric. These recommendations acknowledge, however, that in the short term the priority will be to preserve the modest and fragile progress made in the last few years. For the CICIG, the United Nations and other leading donors, the immediate concern will be to resist excessive dependence on the military, continue to undermine clandestine groups in the state, and build up the capacity of criminal justice institutions. At a crucial time for Guatemala, they will be anxious to see whether the new president serves these goals or imperils them. Details: The Hague: Clingendael Institute/Impunity Watch, 2012. 57p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 10, 2012 at http://www.clingendael.nl/publications/2012/20120100_briscoe_breaking.pdf Year: 2012 Country: Guatemala URL: http://www.clingendael.nl/publications/2012/20120100_briscoe_breaking.pdf Shelf Number: 124416 Keywords: Corruption (Guatemala)Criminal Justice Reform (Guatemala)Organized Crime (Guatemala) |