 Good morning everyone, welcome to the US Institute of Peace, USIP, my name is Steve Hage, I am a senior expert here, focusing mostly on our Columbia program, but very glad to be a part of this important discussion on Central America. We have a very wonderful panel of distinguished experts on the topic of drivers of violence in Central America and the causes behind different forms of violence and conflict across the Northern Triangle. We won't be covering, fortunately or unfortunately, the very complex dynamics in Nicaragua. We're going to focus exclusively on the Northern Triangle this morning. So I will have a chance to moderate, but we're going to have three very fantastic panelists who I'm going to introduce shortly. Before that though, we are very grateful for the opportunity to welcome for several opening remarks from our colleagues from USAID, particularly Steve Olive, our Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator, who is currently the Deputy Assistant Administrator for USAID's Latin America and Caribbean Bureau. Steve serves the acting director of the Foreign Service Center in the Office of Human Capital and Talent Management from 2007 to 2018. He also serves as the Deputy Mission Director for Somalia within USAID Kenya and East Africa Mission in Nairobi from 2014 to 2017. From 2016 prior to his departure from Kenya, he concurrently served as the Acting Deputy Chief of Mission and occasionally as the Charter d'affaires for the U.S. Mission to Somalia. Prior to joining USAID Kenya and East Africa, Steve serves as the Deputy Admission Director in USAID Haiti, where he coordinated the Internet Agency work among several pillars in the post-Earthquake strategy from 2011 to 2014. He also served in both Peru and Nicaragua prior to that. And prior to joining USAID, he worked in Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines on different environmental and natural resource management issues, including American Samoa. Steve has PhD in political science from the University of Hawaii, a master's in public administration from the University of Tennessee, and a bachelor's in public administration from Miami, Ohio. So it's my great pleasure to welcome Steve and provide him the opportunity to begin this important discussion this morning with some opening remarks. Thank you very much, Steve. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming out on a rainy day. It's good to see everyone, and we also welcome everyone who's online with us today as well. It's really a great pleasure to be with you today and kick off this super important topic. It's a looking at whether the drivers of violence in the Northern Triangle is certainly no easy issue to look at. And I'm really grateful for your participation, whether you're here to learn from our panelists and from the discussion or even better, contribute, because we do need many people to work on the issue if we really are going to address the core drivers of violence and insecurity in this region. And so, really, please participate fully. We welcome questions, ideas, et cetera, throughout this morning. I want to thank the United States Institute and the Conflict Prevention and Resolution Forum for organizing today's event. And thank you, Steve, for your kind introduction. I also want to thank our panelists, who you're going to meet shortly. Enrique Reg is the Director of Citizen Security Practice Area at Creative Associates International and also a former USAID alumnus. So we're glad to have you here. Lisa Haugard, Executive Director of Latin America Working Group, welcome. And Adam Isickson, Director of Defense Oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America. Welcome, Adam. And again, we're really looking forward to your insights and those that you will contribute from the audience. As leaders in civil society, you all lend a critical voice to the topic that we are discussing today. And that is how we, as a development community, can help to prevent and mitigate violence, support community resilience, and help stabilize the region. So this morning, I'd just like to share USAID's perspective on this issue. As a development agency of the U.S. government, we have a very particular responsibility and mandate to advance U.S. national security and economic prosperity and demonstrate American generosity and promote the path to recipient self-reliance and resilience. In fact, as our USAID Administrator, Mark Green, says, the purpose of foreign aid is to end the need for its existence. And that's our long-term goal in the Northern Triangle, as well as all of the countries that we have the pleasure to work in. To achieve this goal and the critical milestones we must pass along the way, we must have reliable data, thoughtful analysis, and thoughtful analysis to guide our strategic planning and inform our work. This is especially important in complex regions like the Northern Triangle of Central America, where gang violence, transnational crime, deep-seated social and economic inequity, lack of economic opportunity, high rates of employment, and weak institutional capacity. It's a lot, but it does undermine efforts to improve security, advance prosperity, and strengthen governance. The reality of this complex situation came to the forefront in 2014, when tens of thousands Central Americans, unaccompanied children and families arrived at our border. Immediately, the United States made it a United States government policy priority to understand the forces that drive these flows to shape assistance and security policy in the region. Creative research conducted at that time suggested that many of these children and families were motivated to leave their homes by rising violence in their countries of origin and primarily in our Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Anecdotally, we know that the reasons for migration were distinct and variable by country. So while we talk about the Northern Triangle, we realize that each country has its own unique sense of a set of circumstances, and each community has its own unique set of circumstances. In some cases, they are economic, with families unable to afford basic commodities like food, and in other cases, we're more closely tied to security, and often the combination of the two. Still, experts continue to disagree, and that's a good thing, on the relative importance of violence as the driving force of migration relative to economic and other factors, because it is important for us to really dive into the data, and we're only just now discovering what many of those drivers are, and that's why I think our pluralistic views and opinions today are so important. In the years since 2014, USAID has continued conduct analysis, commissioned studies, and used data to shape our strategy in Central America, so that we can be as effective as possible. So to help introduce the topic under discussion today, where our panel will discuss this complex challenge of how to address the drivers of violence in Central America, I would like to offer some lessons that we have learned. Here are four key points that guide USAID's work in crime in violence and prevention. First, we must treat violence in the same way we do health crises. Like an epidemic, violence can only be treated, cannot only be treated, but also must be prevented. Evidence shows that different forms of violence are strongly connected with each other, often sharing the same root causes and best treated by complementary responses. By focusing on individual and community-level risk factors to help identify and support high-risk youth to stop perniscuous behaviors before it starts, USAID seeks to promote more sustainable, cost-effective, and evidence-based approach to crime and violence prevention than the monoduro policies that have held sway in the region. Violence prevention is the backbone of USAID's security programs because it works. We have found that our investments in high-risk individuals, low-cost youth outreach centers, public small infrastructure improvements, municipal prevention communities, and community policing dramatically lower crime victimization rates and improve public perception of security in the areas that we work. And let me emphasize the areas that we work because we, as a U.S. government, cannot do it all, and we need other partners and other cooperation. And we've seen that we can make an impact in certain areas, and if those models can be scaled up and replicated in another way, we have much more hope for the region. But so we do, as we go on through today, you'll learn more about some of these models. We've seen encouraging declines in homicide rates across the region and steep declines in many of the municipalities where we have our programs. In El Salvador, for example, our crime and violence prevention efforts contribute to an average of 45 percent decline in homicides in the municipalities prioritized under the government of El Salvador's plan El Salvador Seguro between 2015 and 2017. Municipalities with the largest integrated USAID and State Department programming saw even higher declines. For example, in Zaka Kuluka, homicides dropped by over 66 percent from 2015 to 2017. Similarly in Honduras, USAID's efforts contributed to a 36 percent drop in Honduras's national homicide rate from 2014 to 2017. Furthermore in Honduras, urban high crime districts where USAID and the State Department work together, we have seen an average of 54 percent decline in homicide rates from 2014 to 2017. What accounts for these marked declines? The answer, of course, is complex and cannot be solely attributed to our program. So let me be clear. But USAID is not saying we did this. We did it in partnership with many other entities that contributed to it and it will take many more to continue these positive trends. And nevertheless, there is no doubt that the strong efforts in violence prevention led by these governments and supported by USAID and the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, or INL, are a major contributing factor. Which brings me to the second point and a point that I think many of you in this room we hope will contribute to, and that's data and using the data that we have. To maximize impact, our approach must be informed by data. Evidence suggests that violence tends to cluster around specific places and people. It also shows that national level statistics, while telling, can be deceptive. For example, in Guatemala, more than 50 percent of the country's homicides occur in approximately 20 of its 340 municipalities. Likewise in Honduras, roughly 40 percent of homicides are concentrated in three of the country's 298 municipalities. Drilling down even deeper, a recent study of Latin American cities found that 50 percent of homicides occurred in roughly 3 percent of city blocks. And in another, it was asserted that over .5 percent of the population is responsible for up to 75 percent of the homicides. With this in mind, USAID programming revolves around smart geographic and demographic targeting, blending population-based programs in high-violence communities with targeted intervention for high-risk youth. And in the sake of time, I obviously have focused on homicides. But there are other indicators of violence and insecurity in these communities that should be tracked, that many of your organizations are tracking. And it's important to have those other data. So I don't want to at all leave the impression that homicide is the only thing that we're tracking. It's complex, and there are many other data to look at. But the important point I want to make is we do have that data, youth in your organizations have that data, and there's more we can get. And it's really important for us to analyze that so that it can inform future programming. My third point is that violence prevention must continue to be a cornerstone of every country's public safety strategy. Breaking the cycle of violence requires the mix of preventative and punitive actions, an approach that marries an effective, fair and professional police force with prevention activities. Marrying, professionalizing the police force, but also with prevention activities. A criminal justice system that's capable of fairly investigating, prosecuting, and if the evidence warrants incarcerating perpetrators of violent crime, and also victims assistance programs. Thankfully, this recognition is currently at the core of each of the Northern Triangle government security plans and strategies. I was just in Columbia two weeks ago and really saw the impact of victims assistance programs and programs that really promote understanding between the victim and the perpetrator, traitors, to really bring them oftentimes in non-traditional ways of resolving conflicts. And really, we see it work in Columbia and we're seeing it work in the Northern Triangle, where if you marry those items that I just went through instead of focusing in one area, but combining several different areas, we can have a very positive impact. And finally, this brings me to my fourth and final point. This isn't something that one entity can tackle on its own. To truly succeed in the long term, we need the participation and buy-in of more than just governments. All of you, communities, the broader civil society, and especially the private sector have important roles to play. As essential as the government role is in creating the abling environment to affect change, it is the efforts of the broader community that make that change sustainable. Going forward, we at USAID stand ready to assist, but above all, we support the Northern Triangle governments and their ownership of their citizen security goals and offer interventions when possible and we're needed to support their plans. This is a critical issue, one that will remain a high priority for USAID, especially as we look to improve security and prosperity in the region that we share. For more information about USAID's programs and partners, please visit our website at USA.gov slash central dash America. So that's USA.gov slash central dash America. Please talk to my distinguished colleagues at USAID, Barbara Ferstein, who is also a deputy assistant administrator for our Latin American and Caribbean Bureau. Niels Mueller is in our Central American office and Elena also in our Central American office. Please talk to them throughout this afterwards if you have any other questions about USAID. But again, I want to emphasize, we work government to government. That's what we do with your tax dollars as a U.S. government. But there are so many more actors that are at play here that I've read of communities, food sector, NGOs, et cetera, many that our panelists represent. And it really takes everyone to work on this issue for us to continue to make headway. And that's why I do challenge all of you in today's discussion to bring up new and fresh ideas, your own experiences in the region, and suggestions. And I hope we have a really rich dialogue for that. So once again, thank you to the Institute of Peace for hosting us today. For the panelists, for your contributions, but most importantly for your participation in helping us all to work together to address the core drivers of violence in this region. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Steve, for those opening remarks, outlining both some of the complexities of the region, but also some of the very interesting and innovative approaches that the U.S. aid has brought to those challenges in the three unique countries of the Northern Triangle, particularly in focusing in targeted ways on specific demographics and specific municipalities as well as with a holistic approach trying to take into account multiple fields of practice and bringing them all of their contributions to bear. So very grateful for the beginning of that, and I want to echo Steve's sentiments of invitation to invite you all to engage. In this discussion, we're going to go through a traditional panel format and then open it up for questions, and although Steve won't be able to be around for those questions, some of his colleagues, as Steve pointed out, will be here for one-on-one if you want to come up to them after the panel this morning. I want to, before I mistakenly fail to introduce our partners, as Steve pointed out, in this morning's discussion of the conflict prevention and resolution forum, and just want to give a very quick background to CRPF, which has held a monthly platform in Washington, which highlights innovative and constructive methods of conflict resolution with the goals of providing information from a wide variety of perspectives, exploring possible solutions to complex conflicts, and providing a secure venue for stakeholders from various disciplines to engage in cross-sector and multi-track problem-solving. And these forums are often held here at USIP or at CIS and organized jointly by the conflict management program in conjunction with Search for Common Ground. So we're thankful for this partnership, and USIP is grateful for the chance to host this this morning. As Steve mentioned, we have three distinguished panelists. We have Lisa Hogard from Latin American Working Group, Adam Isaacson from WOLA, and Enrique Roig from Creative Associates International. We're going to begin this morning with Adam's comments, and I will just, many of you are very aware of Adam's longstanding role and leadership in many ways on key policy issues here in Washington and across Latin America for many years, really dating back as his bio points out to 1994. Adam actually is currently the director of Defense Oversight, of the Defense Oversight Program at the Washington office on Latin America, which monitors US cooperation with Latin America's security forces tracking military and police training, arms transfers, security engagements, and their implications for human rights and civil military relations across the Americas. This is involved a great deal of liaisoning and with our defense community, with congressional oversight staff and partners in the region. And part of that unique products of Adam's work has been a vast database of update information on military assistance and other security issues. Adam's also done a lot of work on border security, although that's not going to be the exclusive focus of this discussion this morning. He's also done a tremendous amount of work in Columbia for many years. And before joining Wollin 2010, Adam worked for many years at the Center for International Policy and fortunately has a great deal of initial experience back in the early 90s working on Central America with the RIS Foundation for Peace and Human Progress in Costa Rica. So, Adam, thank you very much. The floor is yours. Thank you, Steve. Should we go about 10 minutes or so? Okay. I'll just start up by, since I get to go first, framing the problem as I see it. And then maybe I'll give just a walkthrough of what US policy towards Central America has looked like, maybe going back to the 80s. And I'll try to do that in less than 10 minutes. But I could do that. In terms of framing, I mean, I was just thinking this through over the past few days. I mean, just in the first two weeks of September, the former president of El Salvador, Tony Saca, who had just admitted to stealing $301 million from the Treasury, was sentenced. But only to 10 years in prison, even though he refused to give much information on others who he colluded with. In Honduras during the first half of September, the US attorney in New York found that the commander of the special criminal investigative unit of Honduras's police in the biggest city, San Pedro Sula, had been committing murders on behalf of the Cachurros organized crime group. In Guatemala, I don't have to tell you what's been going on the first half of September. I'll just very quickly, the president, Jimi Morales, is refusing entry to the head of the CC, the very effective anti-corruption prosecuting body, despite at this point what his constitutional court has specifically said he should allow it to happen. In terms of framing beyond, that's just the first couple of weeks of September. It gives you an idea of the corruption and perhaps the ethical crisis in which the country's leadership and institutions are. Find themselves in right now. The folks at Small Arms Survey concocted, putting together 2015 and 2016 homicide data as best they could, just a list of which of the most violent countries in the world in terms of homicide rate. The so-called Northern Triangle countries were second, fourth, and 17th in the world, and that includes countries at war. You put Syria, Afghanistan, Central African Republic in that mix, but they're still that high. At the same time, UNDP stacks up countries according to the income of the top 20% and the bottom 20% and what's the ratio between those. And you have the 10th, 13th, and 17th highest ratios in the world. Now, in that context, the United States, of course, has been by far the number one partner to Central America. But the story, I mean, I'm not gonna give you the grim story of US Cold War support to Central America, except to point out that as much as our assistance to Central America, the Northern Triangle is these days, 600 something, maybe 700 million dollars a year. If you're to put that all in a column graph, we'd be looking behind us at the Himalayas because the 1980s, especially adjusting for inflation, was a time of enormous, generous support to Central America. Much of it, military support, not all of it, but in 1984, El Salvador alone got a million dollars a day in military or economic assistance. And that's 1984 dollars, which is obviously a lot more now. That's the climate that just on an autobiographical note. I was 13 then, and paying attention to the news, and Central America was on Ted Koppel's nightline almost every night. And this got me interested in why in the world were we propping up governments, especially at a time when the human rights situation was as bad as it was. The organized crime, gang, and public security situation was nowhere near as bad. Sure, you stood a chance of being mugged, but you did not have these kinds of homicide rates. It was mostly either state or political violence that was going on. Sort of like we're seeing in Nicaragua on a much lower but hideous level right now, or in Honduras after the dispute of elections late last year. Unfortunately, the United States was often on the side of those states. Now, the Civil Wars ended thanks heavily to initiatives from those governments themselves in the late 80s, early 90s. They were peace processes, and US assistance was generous in the first two years to helping cement and place peace processes, especially in El Salvador. Where USAID's mission played a big role in helping land reform, for instance, take root, the formation of a civilian national police force. But by the end of the 90s, I came to Washington in my 20s and was ready to work on Central America. But the commitment here was decreasing like a stock market crash every year. It was much less engagement with Central America over those years. Columbia, of course, became a country that was doubling in assistance by the late 90s, year over year. And that's why a lot of us at this table started working on Columbia more. But at that time in the late 90s, the Clinton administration first and the leader of the Bush administration started deporting a lot more Central American migrants, many of whom had gotten, not all, but a number of whom had gotten involved in gang activity in the United States. And I don't tell most of you that MS-13 and Barrio Dieciocho are gangs that started in Los Angeles. Since 1993, the United States government has deported 325,000 people back to the three Northern Triangle countries who had a criminal record here. Now criminal record, loosely, that could mean they'd crossed the border improperly. It could mean they had a DUI or something small. But still, even counting people who may have come a few times, probably one out of every 100 people in the Northern Triangle countries was at some point in their life given a criminal record in the United States justice system and put on a plane back to Central America. Probably about one in 100, which I find mind boggling. Now some of these people were involved in gang activity or drug trafficking activity or other violent crime. And there wasn't much of an effort on being generous there to prepare the receiving country to help them reintegrate those people into their societies, whether they paid their debt to US society or not. And to keep them from continuing criminal activity in their countries. And that did contribute to the explosion of the gang phenomenon in Central America in the 90s into the 2000s. And that gang phenomenon steadily got worse. The same time that with the mid 90s collapse of the large cartels in Columbia, the cocaine trade got a little more democratized and ended up having to take shorter hops through the Central American continent. We saw the parallel development of two types of groups, which we have to maintain distinctively in our mind in Central America. The so called transportista groups, which are where the money is. They're the ones moving the tons of cocaine through the continent, working with the Colombians, working with the Mexicans, and making the bigger money. Doing much more to penetrate and corrupt and really undermine what was left of state institutions at a time when they were trying to make a transition from war and dictatorship to democracy. I'm talking about the Lorenzanas and the Mendozas and Guatemala, the Cacheros in Honduras, the Chepiluna's organization in El Salvador, and many more who are doing this. Now they were violent. They often hired gangs to be their manor secarios. But they weren't the ones contributing to those spiking murder rates. At the same time, you had the parallel phenomenon of the gangs, fed in part by deportees, fed in part by the huge proportion of needies. Children, people between the ages of 15 and 30 who neither go to school nor have a job in those populations, and that exploded as well. To the point that by the mid-2000s, we were talking about a gang epidemic. Southern Command in its studies was starting to refer to them as a new insurgency. And then by 2007, 2008, at the time when Mexico's cartels during the early Calderón administration in Mexico had reached a point of, at that point, unprecedented violence in Mexico. Attention began to shift more to violence prevention during the late Bush and early Obama administrations. The Central America Regional Security Initiative, CARSI, came up around the same time as the Merida Initiative in Mexico. And at the time, in 2008, 2009, it was providing, between USAID's ESF program and INL's Ingle program, we're providing between $200 million and about a quarter billion dollars a year in assistance, mostly to the Northern Triangle, mostly for police reform, community policing, and justice reform programs. That was chugging along. Maybe even some of our attention was being diverted for a while. When in 2014, we had this wave that Assistant Administrator Olive mentioned of the more than, in that year, 2014, for the first time, more than 100,000 unaccompanied children and family unit members arriving at the US-Mexico border, mostly in Texas, asking for protection and asylum. Overwhelming border patrol's capacity to deal with it and making headlines all over the country. Suddenly, there was a sense that, my goodness, we have to do something. The profile of migrants has changed. It's no longer single, mostly Mexican men looking for employment. This year, it'll be at least 46 or 47% children and families, most of them from the three Northern Triangle countries. And most of them claiming, at least claiming, a need to be protected from violence, and we can talk among the panel about to what extent violence contributes to that, I think it's a large extent. Because of that, the Obama administration asked Congress for a billion dollars in new assistance to Central America during the 2015, when it made its 2016 request for assistance. A lot more, really the pillars of this were more police, better policing, police reform for institutions that were troubled. More counter-narcotics efforts. There was some military part to try to interdict more drugs, more judicial reform, more community level violence prevention initiatives, like what Steve Oliver was just talking about in high crime areas. And many more initiatives that I'm sure we'll all talk about. They got out of Congress from that billion dollar request. They were given $750 million, with a lot of worthwhile conditions attached to it. There was some exhaustion in Congress with the elites of Central America. Hey, didn't we bail you out in the 1980s? Why do you need help again? Demanding that they collect more taxes, institute more anti-corruption reforms. A lot of human rights conditions attached to this, which has often slowed some of the delivery of the assistance justly in my view. Since that 2016 aid package, there have been subsequent aid packages of, I want to say, $660 million and a little more than $600 million for this year. And it looks like a similar amount will be approved for 2019. So the commitment is increasing. These aid packages put between half and two thirds of the emphasis on economic and development and civilian institution building and justice needs, which I think is right. But we, of course, are only beginning to see what may be some of the results. I'm encouraged by the homicide rate and other violence data that we're seeing. However, we are still among the top five to 20 highest most violent countries in the world, despite the recent declines. And we still don't know, as Steve Alv indicated, we still don't know how much of the decline owes to better policies, stronger institutions, and how much of it owes to some of this sort of lucky equilibrium in the local criminal makeup, whether there's some criminal group has a monopoly or they've agreed to have a non-aggression pact, something that is probably an unstable equilibrium and we'll see violence go up again. If you've looked at places like Juarez or Tijuana or Medigain over the last several years, you've noticed that homicide rates spike and then go down sometimes when there's a better situation among the local criminal groups. The ideal, at least, is to have the subsequent spikes when things fall apart, not be as high as before, because you took advantage of the window that that pox mafioso opened up for you in order to focus on making the, doing the long-term things needed to make policing, justice, and other institutions work. I think in Medigain we have seen that, the crime still rises to scary amounts, but nowhere near as scary as the early 90s or early 2000s. That's what we can hope for for Central America, but I've got a lot of ideas for reforms that do need pursuing. I think that Carsey and the subsequent aid packages are just sort of the inner layer of a larger onion that we have to peel here with the Central Americans, the willing Central Americans, reform-minded Central Americans, who would be willing to embark on that necessary journey. And I'll leave that there. Thank you very much, Adam, for that. Very comprehensive and very concise, extremely concise overview of a vast array of issues and complex parts of our, particularly U.S. engagement in these three countries over the last several decades, and certainly the complexities of the actors, the different layers and levels of actors on the ground that are driving in many ways or part of inciting those levels of violence and in the case in recent years, individuals to flee that country and bring the attention of that violence in those three countries to the U.S. media and to the policy community here in Washington. So we thank Adam very much. I want to pass the microphone, the figurative microphone along to Enrique Roig, who is the director of Citizen Security at Creative, Creative, I'm forgetting, I'm sorry. Creative, Associates International, I'm sorry, Enrique. Enrique leads the portfolio there on Citizen Security, focusing on programs in Central America, particularly in El Salvador and Honduras, but also across several countries of the Caribbean, as well as Tunisia, focusing on youth violence prevention with very interesting methodologies across both deradicalization programs, as well as gang prevention with some cross-learning between Tunisia and Central America, Honduras and El Salvador. Enrique focused on a lot of his efforts on developing effective and sustainable strategies that improve security, protect citizens' rights, and restore the rule of law. As Steve pointed out, Enrique comes from a significant experience within USAID as the coordinator for the Central American Regional Security Initiative that Adam mentioned, and during that time was very interesting, innovating new methodologies for quantifying and measuring the impact of those violence prevention programs, as well as extending learning between the city of Los Angeles and USAID and signing the first ever MOU. Enrique has also worked in a whole range of other countries outside of Central America over the last 24 years, Azerbaijan, Burundi, Columbia, Serbia, and Georgia, and Panama. So we're very grateful to have Enrique on this panel and look forward to his insights. Great, thank you, Steve, and thank you to CPRF and to USIP for the invitation today. Adam did a great job in terms of contextualizing a lot of the last decades in terms of Central America, and I'll try and see what I can add in terms of the discussion. So let me just start off in terms of sort of the big picture in Latin America with regards to violence. Latin America has 8% of the world's population, but accounts for a third of the homicides worldwide, and 25% of those homicides happen in four countries, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, and Colombia, and of course, then Central America, the Northern Triangle accounts for a large population of those homicides as well. According to the Agadapi Institute, Latin America has 43 of the 50th most dangerous cities in the world where most of the homicides take place. So you're talking about a region in the world that is dealing with a major issue of violence, has been for decades now, and of course, Central America has been hit probably the hardest because it also serves as a transshipment point for a lot of the drugs that are coming from Colombia to the US. Cocaine is the second number, the second highest recreational drug used in the United States, Colombia being one of the number one producers. Some 8% of the cocaine passes through Guatemala. So if you think in terms of the corrupting influence of criminal organizations and the amount of money that is put into shipping drugs and other illegal substances through Central America, you can imagine the impact that has in terms of legal institutions in the region, law enforcement in terms of corruption, government officials, et cetera. And so you have the criminal organization element that is having a huge influence in terms of the violence that's happening in Central America and Mexico as well as the Caribbean, and of course, Colombia, a source country in terms of drug production. But also you have what we like to refer to as also disorganized crime, which is a lot of what you see in neighborhoods in Central America. As Steve Ola was pointing out, in terms of very specific neighborhoods where you see high rates of homicides, for example. So if you look at a country like El Salvador, which has had an average of 80 per 100,000 in terms of the homicide rate, when you drill down to specific municipalities and neighborhoods, at times you can be talking about two to 300 per 100,000, mainly young males between the ages of 15 and 25. And so, and a lot of that is related to gang violence, particularly turf battles, disputes that may happen between gangs and sometimes over local drug markets as well. And so that's a real problem in terms of what's happening on the ground in very specific neighborhoods. And of course then you have the resulting displacement of people from those areas in terms of immigration to the US. A recent study by Vanderbilt University highlights that the number one reason for immigration to the US from Honduras and El Salvador, particularly among those who have been affected by violence multiple times, is the fact of where they live and the violence that's affected them oftentimes are gangs. And so the violence issue unfortunately continues to be a major problem in the region, a one that a lot of us are trying to address through various approaches, particularly trying to focus, again, on particular hotspots on those individuals who we consider to be the most at risk of committing crimes and violence and trying to affect and change certain behaviors that we see associated with recruitment in the gangs as well as becoming involved in illicit activities. And so here in the US and Latin America, there are a lot of programs designed to try and do that, particularly around affecting behaviors. We try and employ the public health approach that Steve Olive talked about in his introduction in terms of understanding what the risk differentiation among those individuals who just happen to live in a hotspot area and those who are actually gonna get involved with a gang and those who have already been involved and how do you address interventions depending on the level of risk of those individuals. So we need better data to inform who those people are, where they live and what are the behaviors that we're trying to change that are hopefully gonna keep them from joining one of these groups. And so a lot of programs, again, focused on things that vary from violence and eruption that have been tried here in the US and also now in Latin America to programs that focus on providing alternative opportunities to young people, programs that are focused on family counseling to change certain negative behaviors, cognitive behavioral therapy, which is a method employed across the region as well. And so there's a lot of interesting approaches and methodologies out there. I think the biggest challenge we have is how to put all these things together in these key areas that are facing these high rates of violence. What you often see on the ground is that a lot of good intentions, a lot of potential funding, oftentimes what we're lacking is coordination at the national level with the government, the host government and oftentimes among different donors and implementers. Everybody's coming in, trying to do different things, different programs and oftentimes it feels very disjointed. And so I used to talk about this a lot when I was at USAID in terms of how do we bring it all together in these certain areas? How do we improve the coordination? It's not an easy thing to do. If it was, I think we would have solved it by now, but again, it's one of those things where you do see improvements in terms of the data collection and the understanding of risk levels and being able to pinpoint specific interventions. It's an ongoing process that's gonna need continued support and continued innovation as well as learning. Some programs might be successful in a certain context. It may not work in another one. And so there's still a lot of adaptation and learning that does need to take place as we try and work on ways that we can prevent violence in the Northern Triangle. Thank you very much, Enrique, and obviously with some of those overseeing these programs in Central America and worked on a very minute level, local level as well as a policy level. It's fantastic to have your insights and particularly as it relates, I think echoes Steve's remarks about the importance and need for improved data to understand which are the focus groups, populations that deserve more immediate attention. So I look forward to more questions, particularly to take advantage from the audience for take advantage of Enrique's expertise. Our third panelist this morning has someone who has a long history on Latin American issues, as well as starting her work on Latin America in Central America. As Adam pointed out, many of us in the 80s and 90s were very concerned by the situation in Central America and Lisa Hogart is certainly one of them leading to a lengthy career of several decades and Lisa is currently the executive director of the Latin America Working Group here in D.C., which spearheads advocacy on human rights and peace issues in Latin America. She focuses on Columbia and Central America development and military aid and policy and coordinates, coalitions and campaigns with US and Latin America. Partners, Lisa has testified before the US Congress multiple times, produced a countless number of reports and memos and blogs on human rights topics and participated in several verification, international human rights verification missions in Columbia, Mexico, Central America on extraditional executions, human rights, migrant rights and electoral observation. She previously worked in Central America, as I said, in Managua at the Jesuit Instituto Histórico Centroamericano and was a Fulbright scholar originally in Central America. So, and Lisa's just recently returning from a very interesting and fascinating discussion in San Pedro Sula in Honduras on gang violence prevention, so look forward to her insights from that recent experience. Lisa, thanks. Thank you, Steve. I'd like to talk a little bit about what we mean by violence because immediately when you talk about violence in the Northern Triangle, we focus on gang violence. And yes, that's devastating. The impact is devastating on young people who might be forcibly recruited or harmed. It's devastating on small business owners the impact of extortion is really terrifying because you pay up or you can get killed. And that's one of the motivating factors for people leaving. So, gang violence is a devastating problem but it's only one of many kinds of violence in the Northern Triangle of Central America. First, you have not only the street level gang violence but you have organized crime. And then you have organized crime connected, is always connected in some way to corruption, local politicians, national politicians, members of Congress. So that network of crime. Then you have incidents like when Honduran government officials sack their country's health system or when you have Guatemalan government officials sacking the customs system. That is linked with violence because there's always some kind of violence associated with that level of corruption but it also has this terrible impact on a government's ability and willingness to provide the kinds of services and protections to its citizens that would help with the problem of gang violence. Then you have the problem of, which is a very serious problem in parts of Central America of attacks on land rights defenders and environmental defenders and pursuing of economic development models that displace people. That is violence too. And so you have, and then you have domestic violence as well. And you have state security forces involved in violence. For example, extraditional executions by members of the police in El Salvador has been a serious problem. The crackdown after the elections in Honduras where particularly members of the military police shot and killed protesters. We're not talking about Nicaragua today but there is a serious problem on the crackdown against protesters, student protesters there since April. So this is all violence. So when we talk about violence, it is not just the problem of some young men. It is all linked and in order to address the gang violence, you have to address these other levels of violence as well. And so when you think about that and you think about solutions, the programs that either the United States or European or other donors can provide to address the question of violence prevention at the level of street violence and gang violence, they're really important. And I'm very appreciative of the violence prevention focus that USAID has that Steve Olive spoke to and that Enrique, the kind of thing that Enrique works on, that can be really helpful and the only sort of thing I've been kind of nagging USAID about is to be as transparent as possible about these programs. And I was really glad to hear about the new website on Central America programs, which should be really helpful. The more transparency, the more dialogue with civil society that USAID can have and other donors can have in the region will only improve programs. So that's just something very important. But USAID programming is just one piece of this. And US policy or any other donor government policy needs to be much, obviously has to be much broader. So you really have to look at how US policy is intersecting with security strategies that might either not focus sufficiently on human rights so that there are forces who are committing extraditional executions or policies that sort of see young people in a difficult neighborhood as, and particularly young men, as sort of hostile forces. And it's so important for the security strategy to be really rights-based and very conscious of this idea of violence prevention as a health issue, which is such a positive way of looking at it. So you have to have a security strategy that is rights-based that goes along with the violence prevention programs, which are very good. And then you also have to think of kind of other overall policies such as immigration policy. And I can't think of anything less productive to do right now for El Salvador and Honduras, which are really struggling with problems of violence at all different levels, is to take several hundred thousand people who have well-established lives in the United States and are sending remittances home to their families and undermine their lives and their ability to help their communities at home, as we have with what's looming right now with the end of temporary protected status in El Salvador and Honduras, as well as some other countries. So the immigration policy really needs to support that violence prevention programs and what should be and isn't a really strong rights-based security policy. It all fits together. I wanted to flag one other issue which has to do with rehabilitation of gang members. That's very important. And when you talk to humanitarian aid workers in the Northern Triangle who are working on these issues of rehabilitation of ex-gang members, they really often feel very stigmatized as, oh, you must support the gangs, you're involved with them. You have to be able to work with, it's very hard to leave gangs, violence preventing and going into gangs is obviously very important, but you also have avenues out. And it's very important to try to think of ways to de-stigmatize that, to make it easier for people to work with ex-gang members and reintegrate them into life and sort of labeling the gangs as terrorists and with the complication with the terrorist list. That makes it really difficult for the U.S. assistance to support reintegrating ex-gang members. So that's an important issue to think about as well. I just wanna end with just one anecdote on Friday, I happened to visit a USAID-supported violence prevention program on the outskirts of San Pedro Sula and Honduras and it basically gave life skills training and work skills training to mainly young men, there were a few young women there in a very poor and difficult neighborhood. And afterwards I asked a couple of the young men what their aspirations were and one said he wanted to have his own car repair shop, workshop, which was pretty lofty aspiration. And the other young man who was really more of a boy, he said, I want cash so I can eat. And that just sort of brought home the kind of level of desperation of some of the young people who are prey to gang recruitment but would choose other options if they could even imagine them. Thank you. Thank you very much, Lisa, for that, obviously, very grounded anecdote of the immediate needs of many of the individuals that are the focus of a lot of gang recruitment, prevention programming as well as rehabilitation which you rightly pointed out is a part of that other cycle and the signatization that goes along with former members of gangs that equally deserves our attention. And I appreciate it as pointing out, broadening the discussion as well beyond exclusively gang violence to the other range of factors, including extortion, which tends to affect more broadly the population than immediate homicides or some of the indicators that receive more of our attention in terms of impacting real family lives and communities. And this question I actually wanted to pick up on and throwing out before we turn over to the audience, I'm gonna take advantage of as a moderator to throw a first question to our three panelists and then we'll open it up further. But Lisa touched upon security strategies and right spacing them and the term of trying to make sure that they're complementary in one way or another to the violence prevention strategies that USAID and others have tried to inculcate or encourage across the region. That hasn't always been the case that there's been receptivity to that approach in different countries and surprisingly look at even the FMLN in El Salvador historically very much at odds with the security services when they've been in power actually turning to some of more militarized security strategies that have led to in certain cases some of those extra digital killings. So I'd love to hear from our three panelists just a question about the evolution of security strategies maybe across those three countries or in the countries that you feel most comfortable in talking about the evolution of those security strategies and whether they've become more citizen security focused less militarized and what is the legacy of the moments where there have been more militarization of those of the security and the sort of the monoluda as is said policies on both gangs as well as organized crime and certainly the corruption that goes along with that with unrelented sort of freedom to sort of do whatever is needed to address the very critical security situations. What can you share with us about what would you say about law enforcement and the judicial systems in those three countries what changes have been made where is there still a great deal of need for further reform and how can that complement some of the community level peace building work at this forum and USIP is most also engaged in Central America and other parts of the world. No, who wants to just give some initial observations on those security strategies and those security institutions both military judicial and where applicable military. Enrique? Yeah, I can start quickly. So I think that this issue in terms of finding the right balance between the law enforcement piece and prevention in general is something that we struggle with not only in Latin America but here in the United States as well. So it's always a question in terms of finding the right level of support for those who are doing the prevention and let's say also treatment in terms of drug use as well but with regards to violence prevention in the region we go through these cycles of Manolura which has been going on for the last two decades but also using incarceration as a method to deal with a problem. You've got prisons in the three Northern Triangle countries as you know that are at over capacity of 100 to 200% and this goes to the issue that Lisa was bringing up in terms of rehabilitation and programs for those who have been involved in gangs which historically has not been an area that governments or even the USG at times has wanted to invest in. When I started at EID eight years ago this was an issue that was always brought up in the interagency and always received a lot of resistance and I would often push back on that and I think that at least now we see that there's definitely been a shift towards doing more of those types of programs which sends a good message to countries in the region that yes, there is an opportunity for second chances. You don't have to use incarceration or Manolura and necessarily to deal with an issue particularly with those individuals who have already been involved in these groups that there is a space for them to reinsert back into normal life and we should be doing more on that side to invest in those opportunities and that's part of finding the right balance because again, if we're gonna rely solely on police training and law enforcement efforts to go in and crack heads then we're just gonna continue the cycle of repeating history where we don't necessarily deal with the problem on the front end which is issues around social inequality, development, looking for opportunities for youth, both girls and boys who are growing up in these communities, often victims of domestic violence, bullying, other kinds of abuse that's happening not only just related to getting violence as these sort of saying but there's a lot of other types of violence that are taking place. That's on the micro level and then you've got what's happening on a macro level with regards to organized crime and it's corrupting influence that it has throughout many of the countries but then you have sort of the responsibility of us as the U.S. in terms of our demand for drugs which largely fuels a lot of this violence just having it in Columbia two weeks ago when talking to everybody about the doubling of hectares of production of coca and that coming 80% of it again coming through Guatemala, Honduras is a major transshipment point for a lot of this that's coming up to the U.S. That a lot more has to be done on this side in terms of prevention and treatment as well. I think today we've been investing I think $27 billion in Office of National Drug Control Policy at the White House has been funding those types of efforts and that's important and more has to be done on that side as well in terms of again how the U.S. invests its own money in the region finding the right balance between what INL does what USAID does is also an important equation all of this as well and so that's going to be an ongoing issue and an ongoing policy discussion that needs to be had from this side as well. I completely agree with what Enrique said. I would just add that there's a particular problem in the Northern Triangle has been the reliance of the use of the military in policing. The problem obviously starts with the police and the difficulties of police reform but bringing the military in is always talked about as a temporary solution and yet it goes on for decades and it's best just to say no to the use of military in policing. You have that happening in all three countries. Honduras has a special military police which has been implicated in a number of human rights violations in Guatemala and in Guatemala has long had joint military police patrols in El Salvador, the use of the military with police has been increasing and that has been a real concern. So it tends to be an easily, well let's try that solution but once you try it, it's really hard to stop so I think that's very important to flag in the Northern Triangle. In the starting just in the 10 years or so since the first car seat aid package at that time the monodurah was in fashion throughout the region, people were being rounded up just because they looked like gang members put into overcrowded prisons and coming out as gang members even if they weren't before and the confusion between military and police roles. I mean the three countries that we're talking about all have militaries and all kind of have civilian police forces the result of mostly reforms that started in the 1990s before that the military was in charge of everything. So now you have a force that is trained for combat and for defeating enemy with overwhelming force but doesn't really have a lot of external roles to play maybe they can guard the coasts or the rivers or the borders or something but they always end up being deployed in the streets for something they're not trained to do. I mean while you've got police forces that are still in their infancy, horribly underpaid barely have established a professional track for police forces, driven by corruption, weak internal controls. Now at the most inner layer of this onion I think that the US programs and some of the more enlightened governments that have been elected have made important progress. You know, smarter policing, community policing, hotspot policing, model police precincts, some prison reform, some accredited prisons, some steps toward judicial reform, some depuration of reviewing the backgrounds of police and getting rid of bad cops, some movement of the military out of the streets and towards more interdiction based missions but only a little bit. But this is all very incipient still. There's such a long way to go and meanwhile the outer layers of the onion act as strong constraints to this. This is a terrible analogy of the onion but I think it's something with layers outside the core. I mean you've got incredibly low tax collection rates so these are broke governments that are not gonna be able to give a policeman a decent salary or build a decent police academy or all these other needs. Rampant, unpunished, just a disconnect between actions and consequences be it for corruption or be it for threatening or killing an honest cop or a human rights defender or a judge. A drug policy we here in the United States have whacked our own domestic Marshall Plan or Moonshot to reduce our own demand for the drugs that are pouring through Central America so that's always gonna be a constraint that you have this hugely profitable product going through those countries. An immigration policy that does not view kindly the idea of people who are basically facing the same violence as an armed conflict, getting a chance to seek asylum or have temporary respite here or taking into account the impact of our own massive repatriations. Our gun policy, which makes it very easy to buy guns here and most of the guns used in violent acts in Central America come from gun stores and gun shows here in the United States. Financial flows on just way insufficient action on trying to curb corrupt finance money coming to the United States or elsewhere through the global financial system. The real estate markets in Florida and Texas and other states are full of ill-gotten gains from Central America. You know, it can go on. I can talk about climate change which is causing so much hardship in whether they're calling it the dry corridor of the Northern Triangle and bringing so many people from rural areas to have to migrate and contributing to violence that way. But I've already given enough examples there of some of the outer layers of my bad analogy of the onion. Thank you very much. And just to add as well the description that they've all given of the security systems in these security and law enforcement judicial system in these three countries all end up in the mistakes that they make all end up leaving lasting legacies in the perception of the population of those institutions that ideally we would be encouraging to be protectors of those communities against violent actors. And yet the relationships are ultimately because of those mistakes because of those periods of monoluda, they break down and the legacies of the 80s as Adam pointed out, of a militarized security provision approach across the region lead to lasting mistrust for those institutions and corruption linkages with organized crime themselves, certainly undermine the ability or the interest of communities to in any way cooperate or view those security institutions. So that's certainly there's been progress on different fronts in some of the community policing programs but is also something that just as much as homicide rates need to be managed the degree to which communities actually feel safe and their perceptions of those security providers is something that when we think about data that needs to be collected that to the extent possible continue to look towards whether communities actually view and trust those security providers as being in their working in their interests. So that opened up, we don't have a whole lot of time we started a little bit late but we'll take about maybe 25 minutes of questions for those that can stay around. So we'll take maybe two or three questions and then I'll hand it over to our panel. We will start here with a gentleman in the middle and then we'll go here and there and then come around. Thank you very much. My name is Mike J. Geetz and I used to be here at USIP. I currently teach at George Mason University in the peace and stability hours programs and my question is gonna focus on CSAG and thank you very much for bringing that up. Basically, it seems there's a top down and bottom up strategy, bottom up being prevention but the top down to address the issues that Lisa articulated so brilliantly. And by the way, the panel's insights are really tremendous. I wanna congratulate you on that. So the problem, the conundrum that arises when the government itself is part of the problem has suggested by Jimmy Morales's action what to do. So Yvonne Velasquez spoke Friday, the commissioner for CSAG at an event will posted and he said, the US reaction to the attempt by Morales to terminate CSAG, the entity that's trying to promote the rule of law, the top down strategy. The US policy has been ambivalent. So can we, and in the vein of suggestions from civil society, et cetera, can the US, can we expect the US to make it unambiguous that we condemn his efforts to terminate CSAG and that we support its effort and continuation in Guatemala and in which the model was also applied in Honduras and Moxie. So it's being used in the Northern Triangle. Thank you very much, I have one question here on the right. Hi, thank you, my name's Brian Bowman. I'm a journalist with the Globe Post here in DC and I was wondering if anybody on the panel could speak to the role of trade and trade agreements that have contributed to inequality in obviously the Northern Triangle but more broadly across Latin America. I know that there's been a good amount of academic research done about how NAFTA has hurt the agricultural sectors in these countries and there's been a lot of discussion about how, if you have people who are unemployed and lack opportunity that can lead them into violence. So. We'll take one more question in the back and then we'll come around for another round. Hello, Catalina Crespo from the Will Bank. I have a question, we've talked about or you've all talked about violence in the Northern Triangle and something we haven't addressed is how that is expanding within the rest of the countries like Costa Rica, Panama and even Nicaragua, specifically with gang violence. Are there any suggestions about prevention or interventions that you would suggest for these other countries to take on in order to prevent them to become the next El Salvador or the next Honduras? Thanks. Great, thank you. So we have a question here on US policy to, or US response and building US response to that measures taken against CCG trade agreements and then potential expansion across the regions where other countries that haven't experienced, traditionally experienced the levels of gang violence and what interventions could be there. So I don't know, anyone wants to, Lisa, would you like to? On the question of CCG, it is really important that all donor governments be absolutely clear with the Guatemalan government about the importance of continuing CCG and continuing with the leadership that it has and that has been backed by the United Nations. Other corrupt governments are watching to see if they can get, if Guatemala can get away with taking in massive amounts of international, not massive amounts, but substantial international assistance and continue with corruption at the highest level and the answer has to be no. The answer for Honduras, who you can believe is watching, but this affects many other countries around the world. That's just a basic thing that no donor should accept that kind of level of corruption. And CCG is a very interesting new mechanism and it provides some new kinds of possibilities for international engagement on the issue of corruption which we've learned is intimately linked with the problem of violence and human rights violations. So the answer just has to be a strong no. That's what we're still going for. We're not accepting an ambivalent reaction by the United States or any other donor country. The Guatemalan civil society has backed this CCG has brought hope to the country. And so all of that civil society energy would really be also undercut. All those hopes would be undercut. So that's, you know, it just has to be unambiguous. I can give unsatisfying answers to all three, but you have to. Likewise, but on the CCG issue, I just wanted to add that it's also important that the capabilities, the capacity for investigations and prosecution obviously needs to be passed on to Guatemalan institutions, the Ministry of Public Health, for example. And I know that's been part of the efforts, but more needs to be done on that side. It's CCG as an international commission is important with the role that it plays, but at some point that has to be handed off to domestic partners in Guatemala to actually carry on that work. On the question of prevention in other countries in Central America, I guess my main advice there would be start early and start soon. I worked on a program in Panama on youth violence prevention about eight years ago when the homicide rate was 20 per 100,000. And so more can be done, particularly working with juvenile justice systems in the region is always important, looking for ways to reduce recidivism rates or that these in people morph into something more problematic later on. And so starting early there in terms of prevention work is gonna be important. Again, finding the right balance between with the work with law enforcement, thinking that we can arrest our way out of the problem. But there's a lot of lessons learned and experiences in the region itself that are very applicable to the potential work in the other countries as well from community-based interventions to community policing and other efforts around, focusing on behaviors for example, those are things that are being done currently. And so there's plenty out there to learn from and to apply and adapt in those contexts. Just a pile on to the CC, I mean you've got bipartisan letters that have circulated in Congress, condemning Jimmy Morales's moves. You have certainly, it's not hard to find people in the Foreign Service who have their hair on fire about this, but the absence of a strong response has come from the top most levels. And I don't see that, we're gonna keep pushing, but I'm not sure what's gonna move them at this point. On trade agreements, I mean I'm not a trade expert, but I mean even your most enthusiastic globalizer free trade advocate will acknowledge that while trade agreements, they will say create a net increase in employment and wealth probably, they should be win-win agreements, they can be very brutal in the shocks that they blow to sectors of the economy. And we saw that certainly, for instance in Mexico's corn sector in the 90s and the resulting spike in migration to the United States in the late 90s, early 2000s. In the year 2000, there were 1.6 million Mexicans apprehended at the US-Mexico border in a country that had about 120 million people. I mean that's stunning. And a lot of that is because of the shocks that NAFTA dealt in the mid 90s. Even if there were winners and losers, a lot more people got jobs along the border in places like that. Something similar happens as a result of free trade in Central America, certainly. Yeah, I mean Costa Rica and Nicaragua both have seen their homicide rates go over 10, which is a dream of the Northern Triangle, but it is still heading very much in the wrong direction. Panama has gone down somewhat, but it's still higher than the other two. Somebody at the Defense Department told me this year that so far in 2018, as they track the maritime vessels that are leaving Colombia full of cocaine and going towards the Isthmus, that more boats this year have headed to Costa Rica than to Guatemala, which is very alarming, actually. Now, that's not the main cause. Oh, a bunch of tons of cocaine coming through is not the main cause of the violence. We should never conflate the gang violence. That doesn't mean that people in downtown San Jose are suddenly having shootouts, but it does mean that the potential for corrupting Costa Rica's Farsap Pública, which is easily the most professional force in the region, is much greater. Especially in a place like Gofito, Prentareñas, or something like that, it could be much worse. And that could ultimately translate into the whole force becoming more deprofessionalized if they're not vigilant, but we are at the level of what Enrique recommended in the sorts of reforms that Carsey has sought to that inner level of the onion, the things that are easier to actually help professionalize and make the police protect and serve better and to head off youth violence before it starts happening. I think that's where we are. Now, Nicaragua's a whole other phenomenon. One reason why gang violence has been lower was simply a lighter version of the Cuban model of policing, we might say, where the police really had a much better sense of what was going on in the neighborhoods through intelligence and through community organizing that they were deeply involved with. And the gang model didn't really take root in Nicaragua. Nicaragua actually right now, well, I don't know about right now. Last year had a lower homicide rate than Costa Rica, but that's all in the air now, as Nicaragua. Nobody has a very optimistic prognosis for the next year or so, at least in Nicaragua, unfortunately. Nicaragua may be a prime example to see where the institutions, the credibility of those institutions where that wanes, does that then lead to other forces taking up those spaces and creating competition not only amongst themselves, but with the state that's for controlling parts of the regulation of local life and whether that leads to increase in criminal violence in one way or another. We're gonna take another round of questions here. We have one right here. Hi, thank you. My name is Sergio Martinez and I'm coming from the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area. I want to ask a question about how do you integrate sustainable development policies with security and immigration policies that you were mentioning, especially because how can private sector civil society and local NGOs in the Northern Triangle countries can cooperate with the US Development Assistant that comes there? Thank you. Do we have, wait, yeah, please. Hi, do you think US law enforcement has an equal obligation to focus on intervention and prevention when combating MS-13 recruitment in places like Nassau or Brentwood because it seems like instead of relying on arresting and incarcerating, it's arresting and deporting. So what obligation do we have domestically? Thank you very much. My name is Rene Pineda. I'm from the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area as well. My question is, how can you reduce the crime rates in the Northern Triangle regarding the MS-13 and Barrio, the Aciocho gangs? Because in the past, it has been shown that when the police attacks these gangs, they become a lot stronger. Say, one more question there? Yeah. Lisa, I'm Jacqueline from the Latin American Program at the Wilson Center. And Lisa, you had just touched on the topic of TPS. And I'm curious with the end of TPS for El Salvador and Honduras and the potential number of people who will be returning back. What would be the effects on society and have you seen any evidence that the governments are preparing for a successful reintegration of these people? Thank you. I'll have Lisa answer first that last question on TPS and then we'll circle back around to the other three questions. Governments might be making some effort to prepare. They know it's looming ahead of them. But governments can't reintegrate the people who are being deported right now. You go to the reintegration centers and there may be a bit more going on in El Salvador, but in Honduras, people come into the reintegration centers as they come into the airport in San Pedro Sula. They get an intake, an intake of interview of 15 minutes. They get a five minute health checkup. They might get a cup of coffee, but I'm not sure. They certainly get water and they get a bus ticket home if they need it. And that center is run by the wonderful Scalabrini sisters and not even by the government. So the reintegration programs don't really exist in many, certainly in Honduras it might be a little better in El Salvador, I'm not sure about Guatemala. But governments are barely doing anything with the deportations as they exist. And then the idea of incorporating people who've spent 20 years in the United States back to Honduras and El Salvador. One of my concerns is actually that those who will be deported will be targets for extortion. Because the vision of people who've lived for 20 years in the United States going back to neighborhoods in cities because they will be mainly going back to cities, there's no plan about how to make sure they're not vulnerable to extortion. Now many people are not gonna go back. Many people are going to, in essence, go underground. That means that they were not necessarily prosperous, but successful, say business owners, they might own their own house in the United States. And now they can't get legal work. What does that mean to families here who are so strongly connected still to families there? So there's a whole host of concerns about the decision on TPS. And I just wanted to touch on the other question about we should be doing violence prevention programs better in the United States. And the problem goes back and forth, and it's important to us here. And the demonization that's going on right now about MS-13, and I live in a neighborhood outside DC that has issues, and yes, we are scared of MS-13, but demonizing everyone, young people who are in this environment is just, doesn't help the problem. And you really have to have those kinds of violence prevention programs on here as well as there, and think about it more in terms of prevention and then rehabilitation. Okay, you like it? Just on the local approach to the gang problem here, I mean, in addition to needing more community engagement and more creation of opportunity and paying more attention to education, look, I mean, in the 2000s, there was a brief scare about MS-13 in particular activity in Fairfax and Montgomery counties. There were some of those efforts to integrate the community better, but quite frankly, the gang task forces in the police departments of both counties quietly without a lot of hysteria identified, they got their information together, they talked to witnesses, they identified those who were the worst actors, and brought them into the criminal justice system, and there was not a lot of fuss, and gang-related violence went down pretty sharply during the latter part of the 2000s into the early 2010s, and it remains, I mean, it's nothing like Suffolk County, whatever the, however bad the scare actually is there, still even now here, even though there's a larger population of teenage Central Americans right now. It happened without a great deal of drama and could happen again, as long as we can shut out some of the noise coming from the political rhetoric in the Capitol. And I think you addressed the TPS question really well, and just how do you incorporate sustainable development and security integration and bring homicide rates down? It's, in the short term, there's a few tips and tricks that we've talked about and that, in fact, on the U.S. government, INL and AID have supported, and we've mentioned some of them, some of the things that have worked in U.S. cities, like focusing your resources on a few key blocks and neighborhoods and a few key individuals, but ultimately that's not a long-term solution. You do have to bring it together with sustainable development. You do have to make rules apply equally to all citizens in the country, no matter how powerful. You do have to make sure people are making financial and civic contributions to the larger good, including paying taxes so you can actually have a functioning government. These are basic principles, but there are things that you can do in the short term that buy you time as well. That, in fact, we are paying for it to some extent right now in Central America. Yeah, I'll just say, in conclusion, I think policy obviously matters here in the U.S. and in Latin America, so it's important to continue to send that message at a higher level in terms of, again, striking the right balance between the work it's done on law enforcement and prevention, both here domestically and internationally. There's a lot of great people working on this issue here in the U.S., speaking with folks out in Montgomery County from the gang task force and those working on prevention, they get it, they understand that they need to strike the right balance, the same in cities like L.A., Sacramento, and others that are doing important work, and so you find people that are committed to this, but again, it's the overall policy also has to be there in terms of providing, you know, not only resources, but also pointing us in the political direction that people are bought into and avoiding, at least as I was saying, the stigmatization that's happening now that does not help in terms of the efforts on the ground, and so, and it's not gonna help in the context of Central America either where we've seen cycles of monoluda, so that's gonna matter going forward in terms of how resources are spanned, how they're prioritized, striking the right balance, sending messages from the U.S. government with host governments in the region about things like you can't arrest your way out of this problem, jail, putting people in jail is not gonna be the solution to this, rehabilitation does matter, and so hopefully we'll get back on track at some point soon. Great, well, unless there are any other additional concluding remarks or observations that our panelists have outstanding, I wanna thank everyone again for their interest in coming in on a drizzly cold, somewhat cold early fall morning for what is a really important discussion on a region that has a tremendous amount of proximity for U.S. policy dating back from the 80s, as we've said, and with certainly immigration and the questions of TPS is a very close to home, particularly for the DC area with the Salvadoran community, a very large and vibrant Salvadoran community where these things touch them and their families and the realities that are going on in those three countries shouldn't be seen as too far away and too far off in the distance. So I wanna thank again our partners at the Conflict Prevention and Resolution Forum for helping us organize this morning, all of those that joined via webcast and all those that engaged in a very interesting, vibrant and important discussion. We hope that you'll join us for further events here at USIP as well as with the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum and look forward to seeing you in the future. Thank you all. They wanna thank again, a round of applause for our panelists this morning. Thank you guys.