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RIGHTS-CENTRAL AMERICA: Turning Back to a Murky Past?

Raúl Gutiérrez

SAN SALVADOR, May 3 2007 (IPS) - Social inequality is on the rise in Central America, and the region is backsliding with respect to the standards set forth in the American Convention on Human Rights, according to activists and analysts.

Several governments in the region have implemented economic policies that have fuelled the concentration of wealth, and human rights violations are beginning to flare up again, of the kind that activists hoped had been left in the past by the peace agreements that put an end to civil wars in the 1980s and 1990s, said the human rights experts who talked to IPS.

"We are again seeing abductions, disappearances and murders of activists belonging to civil society organisations who were acting within their rights. A setback is occurring throughout Central America," the head of the Committee of Relatives of Victims of Human Rights Violations (CODEFAM) in El Salvador, Armando Pérez, told IPS.

With the exception of Costa Rica, Central America experienced decades of military dictatorship, fraudulent elections, repression of social and political opposition, and armed conflict.

But in 1988, Nicaragua&#39s Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) government signed a peace agreement that put an end to an eight-year war against the U.S.-financed "contra" fighters; in 1992, the Salvadoran government and the insurgent Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) inked a peace deal that ended 12 years of civil war; and in 1996 the Guatemalan government and the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) signed a peace accord that brought a 36-year conflict to an end.

The armed conflicts left in their wake hundreds of thousands of dead and "disappeared" in the three countries.

Celia Medrano of the Central America programme of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) said that the region is "moving backwards" on Article 26 of the American Convention, which stipulates that "the States Parties undertake to adopt measures… with a view to achieving progressively… the full realisation of economic, social, educational, scientific and cultural rights."

The measures being taken by the countries are actually heading in the opposite direction, said Medrano, who was director of the Commission for the Defence of Human Rights in Central America (CODEHUCA) during El Salvador&#39s 1980-1992 civil war.

The hemispheric human rights Convention "implies a commitment not to move back towards the past, and to promote gradual progress; therefore the states should not make decisions to the contrary," Medrano told IPS.

Meanwhile, "countries like Panama and Costa Rica that had stood out for their high human development indices, at least in comparison with the rest of Central America, have shown a reversal in the last four years. In Costa Rica, poverty levels have increased by two percentage points in the last four years," she said.

Every Central American country is a signatory to the Convention and has ratified it.

Pérez and Medrano&#39s statements followed the presentation on Apr. 25 of "Central America 2005-2006, from a Human Rights Perspective," a report which documents violations of civil, political and socioeconomic rights.

The report states that Guatemala is one of the most unequal countries on the planet, where the richest 20 percent of the population receives 59.5 percent of the income, and the poorest 20 percent receives barely 2.9 percent.

And in El Salvador, the richest 20 percent of the population takes more than 57 percent of total income, while the poorest 20 percent of the population gets only 2.9 percent.

The study, sponsored by the LWF, was carried out by a regional team of NGOs: the Mutual Support Group (GAM) in Guatemala, CODEFAM in El Salvador, the Nicaraguan Centre for Human Rights (CENIDH), Panama&#39s Human Rights Commission, and the Human Rights Committee and the Centre for Promotion of Human Rights in Honduras.

The Lutheran Church of Costa Rica and the Foundation for the Study of the Application of Law (FESPAD) in El Salvador, also contributed to the study, as did the Centre for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) based in Costa Rica.

The study reports 122 abuses against human rights workers in 2005, and 226 in 2006.

The report, which was first released in Nicaragua in March, details several of the abuses. For instance, CENIDH lawyer Gonzalo Carrión was beaten by police while trying to mediate in a doctors&#39 protest in May 2006, and was hospitalised as a result. The incident sounded an alarm because in Nicaragua "no cases of repression against human rights workers had been seen in over two decades," Pérez said.

A number of trade union leaders in Costa Rica have received anonymous threats because they participated in protests against the ratification of the free trade agreement between five Central American countries, the Dominican Republic and the United States (DR-CAFTA), the report says.

An Amnesty International study on Honduras said that in December 2006, environmental activists Heraldo Zúñiga and Roger Murillo Cartagena were murdered while driving in the northern department of Olancho.

"According to information received, the police forced them to get out of their vehicle and then ordered them to stand against the wall of the building next to the municipal office of Guarizama. Approximately 40 shots were reportedly fired at them," Amnesty said.

Political scientist Napoleón Campos said there was no doubt that backward steps had been taken in some areas, although he argued that the region had also experienced some positive changes which should be acknowledged.

Although Central American societies have been failing on human rights issues, the changes in the armed forces, which were previously responsible for serious human rights violations, should be recognised, he said.

"It cannot be denied that a generation is now growing up in Central America without dictatorships or military coups," the expert in international law told IPS.

However, Campos was critical of an anti-terrorism law passed in El Salvador, which he said violates civil rights and fails to take into account "the history of the region, where the main terrorist has been the state; the priority should be to legislate in order to prevent state terrorism," he argued.

Campos said it was imperative to strengthen democratic systems and carry out necessary political reforms in the region, because "the historical causes of the conflicts have remained intact, and could trigger social conflicts or wars" again in the future.

Medrano said that the region must overcome the inequalities and injustices that so strongly characterise it. "Central America isn&#39t a poor region, but a region that is impoverished by inequalities in wealth distribution, and injustice," she said.

"At the moment, only a few are winners, and the vast majority are losers," Campos said.