IACHR highlights reduction of homicides in El Salvador but urges improvements in other areas

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(CNN Spanish) - The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) published on Friday the preliminary results of a visit to El Salvador that took place between December 2 and 4.

To date, the Salvadoran government has not reacted to the report.

These are some of the points highlighted by the IACHR:

• The IACHR welcomes that in these first 6 months of government, the homicide rate has been drastically reduced to approximately 50 per 100,000 inhabitants, with the lowest figures since the peace agreements. Likewise,
  the State reported on the reduction of the crime incidence in this same period.

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• The Commission values ​​the efforts of the State to develop a comprehensive citizen security policy with the participation of different government agencies both to prevent and prosecute criminality.
• While the average overcrowding rate in prisons is 142, it is the Commission's attention that some penal centers have up to 600% overcrowding.
• The Commission is particularly concerned about the poor conditions of detention observed in prisons
  They were visited. In addition to the overcrowding observed, these centers are characterized by poor infrastructure, unhealthiness, absence of programs primarily for reintegration into security centers and maximum security that house approximately 16,000 people, insufficient medical care, and poor and inadequate access to water. During visits to detention centers, persons deprived of liberty repeatedly expressed concern about the health situation.
• In particular, with regard to maximum security prisons, the Commission is concerned that the isolation would be used as opposed to international standards in this area. In this sense, this regime is applied for a long time.
  to all those people considered “of high danger” or of “greater danger”, generally leaders of maras or gangs People in isolation do not have hours in the sun, are not in contact with other inmates, except with their cellmates and do not perform any type of academic, work or recreational activity. Likewise, they are not allowed to enter clothes or personal hygiene products or medicines by families. The IACHR notes with concern that family visits for persons held in maximum security prisons are expressly prohibited by law.

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• The IACHR observed a consensus in civil society, as well as in the various state actors with whom it met, on the lack of complete and systematized access to the archives of the security forces that acted during the armed conflict. TO
  Over 25 years of the Peace Accords, the lack of diligence to declassify these archives constitutes a major obstacle to the reconstruction of the truth of what happened in the conflict. In the same way, it constitutes a serious conditioning to achieve
  justice in cases of serious human rights violations that are under investigation.
• The Commission received consistent information that accounts for the prevalence of discriminatory socio-cultural patterns that permeate Salvadoran society as a whole and impact the actions of public officials, violating the rights of women and lesbian, gay, bisexual people, trans and intersex (LGBTI) to live free of violence and discrimination.
• The Commission reiterates its concern about the criminalization of certain behaviors that have been classified as abortion. Although the Code establishes penalties of up to 12 years in relation to the crime of abortion, the Commission has learned that at least 74 women who have suffered complications or obstetric emergencies have been convicted of aggravated homicide and sentenced to up to 40 years in prison, based on the suspicion of having induced an abortion.

Human Rights Report Violence