WASHINGTON
Development experts here are warning that widespread, unchecked violence against citizens in Latin America is posing a threat to the development of the entire region.
A report containing the testimonies of victims of torture during El Salvador’s 1980-1992 civil war will be published 27 years after it was written, to help Salvadorans today learn more about that chapter in the country’s history.
Boats were tying up at the jetty and there was a bustle of activity as vendors cried their wares, offering shellfish to potential buyers, while young people, sharp knives in hand, filleted sea bass and red snapper. Meanwhile, on the promenade, octogenarian musicians played old-style cumbias and boleros for restaurant patrons.
The combination of widespread disregard for traffic regulations and poor vehicle and road controls puts El Salvador among the countries of Latin America with the highest rates of traffic-related deaths.
After years of delays and obstacles, a law regulating the pharmaceutical market has come into effect in El Salvador, giving its people access to medicines at more reasonable prices, with discounts of over 50 percent for some drugs sold in high volumes, like diabetes medication.
For the first time in El Salvador, a community radio is broadcasting under its own licence. The struggle continues, however, for legislative change that will give these kinds of broadcasters more airspace.
From Zimbabwe to El Salvador, women in poor countries suffer the brunt of climate change, but also learn to recover from disasters, to adapt and even to find opportunities in the new weather conditions.
They wait in parking lots, hoping for someone to come and offer them a few days of work. This work could entail anything from cleaning to construction, and though they may not be trained or equipped for these types of jobs, they have little choice, for they are day labourers, undocumented immigrants with no legal or moral support and subject at the mercy of their employers.
A law to protect Salvadoran migrants, who are frequently victims of attacks and abuses on their way to the United States, is nearing entry into force after having been approved over a year ago. All that remains is for a body made up of civil society organisations to be created to implement it.
After decades of struggle, indigenous people in El Salvador will finally be recognised in the constitution – a first step towards recovering their community identity, which they have been denied by the state and by society at large.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered the Salvadoran state to fully comply with its sentence in the case of the murder of businessman Mauricio García Prieto, and to put an end to threats and harassment of the victim's parents by government agents.
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