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LATIN AMERICA: Children, Women Victimised by Drug Trafficking – Report

Gustavo González*

SANTIAGO, Mar 2 2004 (IPS) - Children and women are the main victims of the crime and violence that go hand in hand with drug trafficking in Latin America, says doctor Alfredo Pemjean, member of the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB).

The 2003 INCB report proposes a strategy of social and economic intervention to combat drug trafficking’s negative impacts on individuals, families, neighbourhoods and communities, said Pemjean as he led the regional presentation of the text Wednesday in Santiago.

This focus is an indication of progress, moving beyond the repression and police action that has predominated the fight against illicit drug consumption and trafficking, said experts consulted by IPS in Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, three Latin American countries where the narcotics trade exists on a major scale.

The INCB is an independent body of the United Nations in charge of monitoring compliance with the international drug control treaties and is made up of 13 experts, including the Chilean Pemjean.

This new report emphasises the “micro-social level” of drug trafficking and its relationship to crime and violence, in contrast to the INCB’s 2002 report, which focused on the macroeconomic aspects of trade in illegal drugs.

The biggest profits from drug trafficking are generated in the industrialised countries, which are the main centres of consumption, said Pemjean. While the producer countries, including Latin American nations, benefit least from the so-called “drug economy”, he added.

The 2003 INCB report states, however, that in this region, and particularly in South America, the political importance of the drugs phenomenon is increasing, based on the relationship – especially in Colombia – between narco-trafficking, insurgency and terrorism.

Brazil, where local drug gangs challenge authorities, and Peru, where insurgents protect illegal plantations of coca (the raw material for cocaine), are also subject to the “political threat” posed by “narco-terrorism”, says the report.

The INCB urges governments to step up international cooperation in order to fight the drug trade and the money laundering associated with it.

Another critical point in the region, said Pemjean, is Haiti, which “has been the leading hub of cocaine trafficking to the United States.” Unless Haiti finds a way out of its crisis that leads to economic and social development, it could turn into a replica of Afghanistan, which has regained its former place as one of the world’s major opium producers, he added.

The Taliban Islamic fundamentalist regime that controlled most of Afghanistan’s territory until it was toppled by the U.S.-led invasion in December 2001 had eliminated most of the country’s production of poppies that are used to make opium and heroin.

“The very fabric of society is challenged by the continued presence in communities of drug-related crime,” states the INCB report.

“Communities that suffer disproportionate levels of violent drug-related crime also suffer from higher levels of other criminality and the disruption to civil society associated with it.”

Pemjean underlined that while the level of violence in consumption-related offences is relatively low, that is not true in the case of crimes involving drug trafficking, which end up victimising drug users and other members of the community, especially women and children.

In Brazil, a large proportion of the average 30,000 murders a year involve drug abuse, dealing and trafficking.

Traffickers in Latin America’s biggest nation often post street children as lookouts to sound the alarm if police are in the area, and employ them as small-time drug dealers. They also kill children who they fear might turn them in.

Janaína Conceiçao Pascoal, president of the Council on Drugs in the southern state of Sao Paulo, told IPS that in Brazil the penal approach to the drug question has fuelled the violence. ”Total criminalisation pushes many people into marginality and crime,” she said.

The INCB report’s emphasis on social aspects ”is a step forward, but the police approach oversimplifies the question, it is reductionism,” said Pascoal, who is also a professor of criminal law at the University of Sao Paulo.

”Also taking into account the various social and economic aspects of the problem would be more effective,” she said.

”In Mexico we have seen that many young people become violent as a result of the cocktail of drugs, poverty, family break-up and lack of education, which affects them from childhood,” said Santiago Estela, a social worker at the Youth Integration Centre, a civil society organisation that receives support from the state.

”Drug traffickers take advantage of that, as do their small-scale dealers, who find their market niche there,” he told IPS.

To fight drug trafficking and its impact on the community it is necessary to fight poverty, unemployment and the failure to get kids into school and keep them there, he said.

But it also necessary to inculcate social values, while keeping up law enforcement efforts, because ”a group of individuals cannot be allowed to flagrantly attack the coexistence of society and the social contract,” added Estela.

”In Mexico, however, a heavy emphasis is put on prevention of drug abuse and rehabilitation of addicts, because it is understood that law enforcement alone does not work,” he said.

In Colombia, sociologist Ricardo Vargas, a representative of the non-governmental organisation Acción Andina, remarked to IPS that the INCB proposal for an approach that also focuses on social and economic factors is not new.

He said the question should be “how far the economic, social and police measures can go at the three levels of activity: consumption, trafficking and production” of drugs.

”In the case of Colombia, with respect to consumption, there is an enormous deficit regarding public health measures, and the penal approach abounds. The penalisation of consumption and the crackdown on illegal drug crops (like coca) eliminate the social dimension of the problem,” he added.

(* Diego Cevallos in Mexico, Yadira Ferrer in Colombia and Mario Osava in Brazil contributed to this report.)