Once known as the murder capital of the world, El Salvador was named one of the safest countries in 2023 by Gallup, a US-based global analytics and consulting firm.
As the only Latin American country included in the top 10 safest countries, 88% of respondents to the Salvadoran survey answered that they felt safe walking alone at night in the area where they live, according to Gallup’s Global Safety Report. According to the firm, people’s perceptions of security are highly correlated with hard data and contribute to the firm’s Law and Order Index.
The index, which ranks El Salvador 15th globally with a score of 89, takes into account indicators such as income, health, food security and homicide metrics, in addition to perceptions of safety.
“Although the country has moved towards becoming a police state, the government’s crackdown on gangs – imprisoning about 2% of the country’s population – has made the country safer, for now,” the report says.
President Bukele’s security strategies
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele declared a month-long state of emergency in March 2022 due to increased gang violence and a spate of killings, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR). So far, this state of emergency has been renewed 30 times, the last of which was declared by the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador on October 4.
“To date, this tool has allowed 604 days without murder and the arrest of more than 82,000 people associated with gangs. Also, it has positioned the country as one of the safest in the world”, says the statement of the Assembly announcing the extension.
The Organization of American States (OAS) also attributed the unprecedented drop in El Salvador’s homicide rate to the state of emergency, “which favors a punitive model to address citizen security challenges,” in their report of September 2024 in El Salvador.
The state of emergency suspended several Salvadoran rights and freedoms, according to the OAS:
- The right of assembly;
- Freedom of association;
- The right to be informed about the reasons for detention;
- Inviolability of correspondence and telecommunications.
The report also emphasized that the Salvadoran government acted legitimately under international law when it imposed the state of emergency in 2022, although it also called for the swift restoration of suspended rights, given that “the critical episode in 2022 does not reflect current security. the situation in El Salvador”, and that the state of emergency “could not become a permanent state policy”.
However, the international human rights watchdog Rights and Security also points out that although the decrease in the country’s violence indicators is almost exclusively supported by homicide rates, other forms of violence have prevailed, including domestic violence.
Disputed data
The University Observatory for Human Rights, which is financially supported by the European Union and USAID and works to compile, systematize, verify and disseminate real information about human rights in El Salvador, denounced that the state of emergency caused serious obstacles.
Among them, the Observatory highlighted a 134.8% increase in the mortality rate in 2023, as “official data reported by state authorities suffer from under-registration, as they do not take into account all the violent deaths that occurred during the year”. Among the excluded figures are civilian deaths in armed confrontations, people in prison and people classified as gang members.
The Observatory’s 2023 annual report also suggests that the information shared by the Salvadoran government on homicide rates is unreliable because, “as of 2022, the national police has cataloged all homicide-related data as confidential.” This has made it impossible to change these rates with those received through requests for information.
Regardless, the entity sees a steady decline in homicide cases, with the rate per 100,000 people going from 21.2 in 2020 to 4.9 in 2023.
Alleged violations of human rights
El Salvador has been cited for massive human rights violations, “including thousands of arbitrary detentions and violations of due process, as well as torture and ill-treatment,” according to Amnesty International.
In a report published in December 2023, the organization detailed an increase in systematic detentions, enforced disappearances and cases of torture since the state of emergency was imposed, in addition to a crackdown on freedom of expression that has put journalists and activists at risk. .
The United States Department of State also acknowledged these allegations in its Human Rights Report in El Salvador 2023, reporting arbitrary killings, brutal treatment by security forces, harsh and life-threatening prison conditions, and violence broadly gender-based as some of the barriers that have undermined President Bukele’s security strategy.
The Socorro Jurídico Humanitario Foundation, which provides free legal advice to innocent Salvadorans criminalized by the state of emergency, has reported 315 deaths of incarcerated people since the measure was imposed in 2022. The most common causes of death reported by the association are violence and lack of medical care, although unknown causes of death have increased in 2024.
“These people only had the right to a hearing on the imposition of measures of captivity, after which they died in the care of the state,” the foundation said.
Amnesty International also explained that the widespread pattern of arbitrary arrests particularly targets people from marginalized communities, who already suffer from crime and extreme poverty.
The conditions experienced by the prisoners inside the prisons have also been strongly denounced by human rights organizations. According to the OAS, imprisoned individuals are stripped to their underwear, placed in small cells where they sleep on the floor, and have no access to clean water or food.
The government of El Salvador has responded to these allegations by stating that it has taken into consideration international standards for prison facilities and that they provide for basic needs, according to a diplomatic note sent to the OAS.
“Human rights NGOs must know that we will destroy these murderers and their accomplices, we will put them in jail and they will never come out. We are not interested in their painful reports, their journalists, puppet politicians or the famous international community”, declared President Bukele in 2023.
Gang violence in El Salvador
After decades of civil war with leftist guerrillas, which resulted in more than 75,000 deaths, the Salvadoran government signed a peace agreement with these armed groups in 1992, according to Insight Crime, a think tank that investigates organized crime in the Americas.
This, however, gave rise to street gangs, commonly called “maras”, according to the expert group. The MS13 and Barrio 18 gangs particularly targeted the poor, urban youth, and marginalization, poverty, and lack of access to basic necessities led to the growth of these groups.
The gangs mainly engaged in extortion, domestic drug distribution and kidnapping, the panel said. However, in March 2012, the government secretly brokered a truce between the two gangs, granting concessions to jailed gang members in exchange for a reduction in violent activities.
Regardless, the country’s homicide rate peaked in 2015, with a rate of 105 murders per 100,000 people, as reported by Human Rights Watch.
The organization also noted that while previous administrations’ responses to crime have oscillated between vague negotiations with gangs and ironclad security policies, both have resulted in renewed cycles of violence.
The cycle of violence that prompted the imposition of a state of emergency in 2022 followed the Bukele administration’s negotiations with the country’s three largest gangs, in which the president offered prison privileges and job opportunities in exchange for lower murder rates and electoral support. according to Human Rights Watch.
