 Okay, good afternoon everyone. I think we can get started. We have our full panel here Thank you for coming to this session. I see a lot of you We're in our morning session that touched on urban violence in particular focusing on Latin America So I think this will be an interesting follow-up to some of those issues, but also a broader look at Conflict in the region My name is Katie Prudome. I'm the Latin American Caribbean team lead for OTI and I'm very pleased to introduce our three panelists all of whom have Studied, analyzed, written on and developed programming around a lot of conflict issues in Latin America Beth Hogan Stephen Dudley and Doug Farrah and their full bios are in the documentation that you have But I'll just say a few words about each one Stephen Dudley is co-director of Insight Crime Which is a joint initiative of AU and the Foundation Insight Crime in Medellin, Colombia Which monitors, analyzes and investigates organized crime in the Americas Mr. Dudley is a long-time reporter Investigator and consultant who studied trends and tendencies of organized crime He's also a book on author of a book on Columbia Civil War If we're very lucky to have two journalists in the room today Doug Farrah is president of IBI Consultants and a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center He's a national security consultant and analyst Prior to this role he worked for the consortium for study of intelligence studying armed groups and intelligence reform He was also the bureau West Africa bureau chief for the Washington Post from 2000 to 2004 Beth Hogan is currently Acting administrator for USAID Latin America and Caribbean bureau and Her responsibilities include oversight of USAID programs policies planning and personnel throughout the region Prior to assuming this role as senior DA for Latin America Beth served as the director of the Haiti task team at USAID She's a member of the senior Foreign Service with 30 years of development experience Throughout not only Latin America, but also Africa and Asia. So very pleased to have these three speakers with us today the The name of this panel future of conflict in Latin America I think poses some really interesting questions about how the region has evolved in the last 20 years and How it will evolve in the future a lot of observers could could look at the Framing of this panel and sort of questioned why the word conflict was used. It's Easy to look at Latin America right now and see a region in which peace and prosperity Are really two of the dominant trends. There's been a decrease in bilateral conflict There's been economic growth throughout the region. There has been increased regional integration There have been improved socioeconomic indicators But I think a lot of other analysts just look at the question and say conflict has morphed what we're seeing now is no less Relevant than it was in the past. We're simply looking at different types of conflict And we need to have a different lens of different programming tools to address those conflicts we For example, we look right now at the situation in Colombia and if the government and the FARC is able to sign an agreement and Peace accords are ratified in Colombia We would see the end to one of the hemispheres or actually the hemispheres longest running conflict between a State and a non-state actor That may not spell the end of conflict in Colombia. In fact, I think the prediction is we'd see a lot more lateral conflict on the other hand It would spell the end to one of the predominant modalities of conflict over the years between a State actor and a non-state actor with a political agenda So that's something I think that is Critical interest to to policymakers in the US and certainly in Colombia itself one of the other One of the other battlefields of the past has been the ideological divide in Latin America Your left and your right wing schools of thought That's that's certainly it's defined politics for the last Few decades and that battle right now. I think is largely being fought in the form of different alliances It's turned into an economic It's turned into a question of an economic and political definition rather than a battlefield In any other way and so that's one area in which we are seeing How competition has superseded conflict? I think one of the areas that our panelists will speak to the most is that of the increasing influence that transnational criminal organizations and other criminal organizations national ones are influencing the countries in which they operate primarily in the northern triangle and This summer we all saw the We all saw the effects of rising crime and insecurity in Latin America and what those of how those Trends are impacting our borders and the influence that events in Latin America continue to have on the US So this is a this is a critical area for us to be focused on I think when we're looking at conflict and something that our panelists will speak to both in terms of whether we understand the Situation adequately Are we watching the right things? Do we understand the nuances? Do we understand how the problem is evolving and do we have the right tools? Do we have the programming responses that are adequate and appropriate for this problem set? We spoke to that a little bit this morning in our panel on urban violence And I hope we can get further into that today. So with that. I just like Stevens to Steven if he can kick off his presentation Thanks, can you hear me? Good afternoon. Thank you so much for the invitation opportunity to just I guess put out a few thoughts here and With regards to the topic at hand topic at hand obviously a very difficult one predicting the future I'm gonna tell you right now that I'm gonna have a very hard time doing that and Mostly not going to try to predict the future What am I to try and do is lay out sort of three things that I think Are steady when we look at the dynamics of organized crime I'm gonna speak mostly about Maybe more from sort of a upper echelon or society building perspective With regards to organized crime and leave my colleague Doug to talk more about things such as you know street gangs and Relationship with transnational criminal organizations and those sorts of things. So hopefully that'll be a decent balance There there are three basic points that I want to relate to you before we open everything up to talk about them The first and again, I think that this is this is important to consider When when we look towards the future is if we need to think about the past And the first is that in all instances that that we've seen that we study What what we see is that crime starts Where a reliable guarantor not necessarily the state but a reliable guarantor of interactions between citizens stops So that is where we see space for criminal actions Obviously, I'm relying a lot on people such as Diego Gambetta and others who talk about this idea of you know a guarantor in economic transactions a guarantor somebody who protects physical space Someone who can who can settle disputes between neighbors those sorts of things But but most of all sort of the regulators of that space the regulators of that territory and again It doesn't necessarily have to do with a state actor, although it can be a state actor that that is playing that role We we see criminal organizations arise in these territories. There's some con that you know sometimes referred to as You know unoccupied territories or Stateless territories or that sort of thing But we also see them in in other respects as well where you don't have a sort of reliable rule system a reliable accountability system and and we see state actors also filling these gaps in some of in some of our studies what we've seen is a What what we're calling a sort of bureaucratic elite that will emerge within state entities mostly having to do with Military or police functions and they also too have they're very susceptible to entering into this territory becoming the only reliable guarantor into these spaces and And then becoming criminal actors themselves very often what we see in fact If you look at most major areas where there is criminal activity in Latin America in particular You will find policemen. You will find ex policemen. You will find current policemen. There's a reason for this This is because there is their territory is where crime thrives. That's the first point the second point I want to make is that crime certainly plays a role can play a role in distorting things such as economic interactions You know, we're tracking a case now in El Salvador that has to do with the with the bean market The flower market and ways in which a criminal actor can even distort those markets and those economies But I think the other thing we need to keep in mind is that that crime over the years In our history has played a role in the formation of the state as well I'm thinking about pirates thinking about marauders I'm thinking about characters that have been You know portrayed in a very nice light. I'm thinking about our own American heroes John Hancock who moved molasses For the illegal rum trade, you know second signatory of the Declaration of Independence These guys are part and parcel of the formation of a nation state Those nascent nation states that relied on paramilitary forces that relied on the Economic activity of these particular actors that were maybe not necessarily deemed illegal at the time This is that this is what we're seeing I think in many respects in the region and what we will continue to see in the region You see this this this convluence of various types of actors acting in concert sometimes and These are the power structures that are emerging in places like Guatemala in places like Honduras They're a mixture of actors. Some of them are Criminal or we would call criminal in nature. Some of them are politicians Some of them are traditional or non-traditional or emerging elites But they're all occupying similar spaces and and they're all Playing for right now. They're playing for a winner-take-all sort of game and And I feel like at times we lose sight of this and and and the reason we say that's kind of a winner-take-all Sort of game is because the way in which these criminal actors can very quickly integrate themselves into these Into these spaces into these social political and economic spaces We think that's because the people within those spaces think of this as a zero-sum game They think of this as a winner-take-all So they say to themselves the only way I can move my economic project forward my political project forward is if I align myself with criminal interests The third point I want to make and and this is also In the hopes that we can we can push the debate forward at least Internally, I'm not sure if you'll ever be able to talk about this in a public voice in any of your meetings at OTI or anywhere else Is that I think we need to stop using these terms good guys and bad guys I'm gonna borrow from von der Feld bad Brown who talks about good criminals the search for good criminals Because in the formation of these of what we're seeing now the formation of these nation-states You have to find you have to weed out the good criminals not everybody is going to be clean But you need to find those people and you need to work with those people you need to engender those people They're not going to be completely squeaky clean in part because the environment in which they operate But they are the ones who in the end and if we look again at our own history We will see the lesson being told they are the ones in the end who can help to foment a Functional state and that's really what we're after we're after the sort of creation of some sort of state that is much more inclusive than what we're seeing That that has regulatory agencies that are responsible and accountable and all the rest and we need allies And in looking for allies. We often divide these people up into good and bad Don't necessarily think those are the best categories Moving forward and with that out Hand it over to Doug Well, thank you Steve and thank you for the invitation to be here In the introduction is true I spent four years in in West Africa with the Washington Post I spent most of the rest of my life in Latin America, so Africa is just sort of a little hiatus here right now I spend a lot of time in Central America and I was just down then with the gangs and San Pedro Sula And that's where the narco areas to the north up to the border and one of the things I've been thinking about is I Having done that and spent Some days in there talking with a lot of unusual weird people is that and then trying to do I'm doing a project with CSIS looking at sort of other alternative governance systems in these this one particular Cross-border Honduras Guatemala area this time I was just on the Honduras side and then and El Salvador is What what you see in the state and I'm then looking forward I think as to what what you can expect from the state If you in the gang areas around San Pedro Sula, you see the state almost solely as a repressor There's nothing there except going to grab gang members if they want to kill The only when we were there the day after the the three hours shootout when the police had gone in to get Some gang members that they thought he'd killed two fiscales to women fiscales who had just been killed a few days before in San Pedro The gangs came out in force like the issue came out and forced to defend these guys. They had a three-hour shootout The the issue had a k-47s with 60 round clips They have C4 they have grenades and they fought the cops essentially to a standstill until and they blew up houses I'm gonna buy the rubble of the houses and Eventually they called in the church to take the prisoners out to make sure they got they were alive when they got to prison because otherwise They wouldn't be so that's one sort of typology of the state in the region The other is the the state and then we want to spend a lot of time on the border El florido crossing there and there you have the state as a co-actor Everything is negotiated with the state because they control that space that crossing and it there are many Paso siegels hundreds of them around there But for the security of knowing that your product will get from point a to point B across both border checkpoints a lot of people go through the regular Border and I was like well, why would you do that? It's because if they catch you outside they'll take everything like if you if you go to Paso siego and the cops catch you They'll just kill you and rob you they it's over if you go through the formal channels You will be able to negotiate your way through so you have the state is sort of a co-actor and Then I don't know if any of you who've spent a lot of time in Honduras I've been hearing for years about the little town called the para iso and Honduras were supposedly The alcaldia is a replica of the Casa Blanca of the White House So I set off on my great quest this time to see if in fact this place existed and son of a gun if it doesn't exist But what's fascinating about the place can you do it really is the alcaldia the giant facade of the White House? Alcaldia del para iso copan Is that there's there's the total absence of the state in there? There's no police. There's no judge There's no military. There's no one on the roads There's no one that the narcos in that town don't want to be there It's entirely an alternative governance system and the reason and there were we stopped the other sort of Narco pueblos along the way and it's fascinating because they view the gangs the narcos view the gangs is Necessary in San Pedro because they control certain territory They need to deal with the gangs in that space not because they like the gangs not because they want to be around the gangs But because the gangs are unnecessary in their view evil as soon as they As soon as the gangs are outside the area where they can control territory the narcos kill them There is no they just they don't they keep saying and we're not gonna let that Malaya remember you know that we those weeds grow here They there's no due process and then you show up you're not known and they suspect your gang member you're dead And so you have these really three really interesting Roles of the state all in one not very large country And then this is when one little tiny section of Of one not very large country which goes to a significant point of the Of the difficulty in coming up with anything macro in the region because all of these are every zone of every country is different Looking forward I think what you see and if you what's been fascinating me out in spending time with the gangs El Salvador and then the gangs in San Pedro Sula in which you have an El Salvador the gangs now with a very developed political Discourse with the ability to describe themselves the oppressed of the earth how its Societies felt it that they were there the way they are that they've done horrible things But they need to be forgiven and blah blah the whole the whole Something very very similar in discourse to liberation theology in the 1970s 1980s very taken from that Discourse and I've been dealing with the gang since the 1990s when I was with them and then Prison the leadership in prison in the 2012 I guess the last time that I saw them there they could they give me like an hour and a half University class on liberation theology in this net never done that before I've been dealing with these guys for a long time It is completely different. So they're morphing into a political Entity of some sort whereas in San Pedro Sula they have a lot better weapons. They're better controlled and no political discourse at all But they're in the process of dialoguing constantly now with the Salvadoran gangs and that will and that will spread over And so I think that what you're in the terms of looking forward to conflict I think that one of the the true damaging elements of the truth in El Salvador Was it gave space for the gangs to begin taking over enormous amounts of territory that they didn't have before? If you look at there there's some clique as we were talking to where they had Two years ago 30 members now they have 400 I mean it's just they they've the the truce had opened up this space where they felt safe In fact in some cases they have more kids wanting to join then Then they're actually then are actually they're actually able to absorb So I think the gangs will play a tremendous role in the conflict going forward because I think one of the our great Misconception of the a great misconception about the gangs is that they want to reintegrate into society I think there there's this myth that if we could just like the ex-combatants I live through the peace processes of Salvador and Nicaragua and most ex-combatants wanted to integrate into society That was that was what they aspire to the gang's done if you ask them. What is the ideal state? What would you like to end up at? Where would you like to be they view themselves as an extra regional? Set of actors they want nothing to do with this day. They identify themselves first is M.E.S. or DS 8 Maybe then they're clica in some fashion Maybe third or fourth will come their nationality Salvador and Honduran where they don't inspire To be in society is we the what they want is society leave them alone and the where they have territory Where they can do what they want and so I think that as that territory expands is coming into It's running up against another reality Which is the driving imperative for the states in the Northern Triangle is reducing violence That is what they have to do to survive the violence level has gotten so high and so Wide-spread and the economic cost has become so high and everything that they do regarding extortion, etc That they're going to start negotiating in ways that we probably won't like I know I personally won't like But the political imperative will be sort of under whatever circumstances Necessary to negotiate and the stronger the gangs get the worse those circumstances will be what we call civil society I think for the first time you are seeing a bit of civil society And this is what was one of the huge failings of the Salvadoran truce It took it didn't take into any account the victims of the gangs and now the victims saying wait a minute Hang on you get all these privileges. What about us and people you killed? And if you look at the decapitations the Descuartizando the you know the mutilations of the bodies the actual homicide rates and stuff It's very horrific Those gangs I and Steve and I have discussed this a lot and we we don't always see eye to eye I think there is a Tendency of Specific gang groups to become much more tied to the transnational organized crime Transnational in the sense of the transport these the networks that will work across the region not in the sense of plugging into Macro giant cartels because they they don't they can't and they don't aspire that although they're trying hard Not I think their groups of the MS that are trying very hard to be interlocutors directly with members of Sinaloa and cut out The transport these the networks, but and it's not widespread. It's not generalized But there are I would say a growing number of clicas of the gangs that now have direct access to larger amounts of cocaine They control the the narco men will they or the internal consumption in these countries is a way of payment But you see them plugging into moving More and they're getting they're getting a lot more money and you know if you they negotiate with the state now So it's a new and different world for them I think going forward the conflict between the state and them will either have to get very bloodly and Probably unwinnable by the state or to be negotiated out in ways that many of us will find morally Appalling but probably necessary for political survivor survival I think we also have a bunch of new actors moving into the region in in ways that we don't yet understand And that we've never seen before primarily the Russians and the Chinese I think as you look at The presence of the Russians growing significantly across the region Very big in Nicaragua and growing very rapidly in El Salvador. They're opening their trade office this Week and by the end of the year, they'll have a major new embassy there And with the Russian state hand-in-hand comes Russian organized Crime and what we're seeing for the first time are serious indicators of conflict between Sinaloa and the Russians in Nicaragua because my Opinion my research has shown is that Very senior levels of the Nicaraguan government protect a lot of elements of the Sinaloa cartel Under certain conditions, which have protected Nicaragua from a lot of the ill effects of the rest of the region Primarily, they can't pay in product They have to pay in cash so that there's not the internal consumption driving the things They don't have a permanent much of a permanent presence on the ground because they they always bring violence and in exchange for that the government guarantees the safe passage of their of their drugs through which was I think behind this Creation of recreating that model in El Salvador was a good deal behind the truth I think when it was when it was being set up But if the if you begin to have Russian and Chinese organized crime, which are very powerful have a whole different set of tools and the local groups are ever have ever come up Against you're gonna see either Negotiation and everybody will come out happy with a lot of money And we'll see a lot more dope going to Europe or you're gonna see a lot of blood or probably some combination of the two as they work this The situation on the inside crime just had a an article on the the growing Chinese transnational Chinese triads in Argentina and elsewhere. You're seeing them pop up across the region Nobody in the region has any expertise in this very there very few Chinese speakers on the outside of the Chinese communities There are very few Russian speakers on the outside of the whether it's not much of a Russian community except in Honduras and a few isolated Areas of active economic activity, but I think if you look forward to where conflict is going You're gonna see these different groups fighting over territory in new and different ways that I don't think we can predict how it's gonna Play out. It's just I would just argue They're gonna be there's gonna be a lot of a lot of violence there and finally I would say the one of the things that was said at the beginning was that you know We the ideological conflict has given way more like economic competition and one of the things I think that's hugely different now in the region than it was during the wars when I was living there uncovering the wars is that you now have clandestine structure structures that survived the war on both sides particularly What case I know Bessar and El Salvador we have you know, he had the far-right desquads You had the especially in El Salvador out of the F millennia at the Communist Party that was the sort of radical the most hard line clandestine group and after the wars on all sides of all the conflicts there were groups within those armed groups that didn't demobilize and What you've seen in one of the reasons why you have this in tremendous growth of transnational organized crime in the region It seems like the virgin birth, right? There's nothing then boom you have all this crime If you go back into the history and talk to the guys who are involved essentially when the wars ended these guys came They're trying their clandestine structures that moved people money and guns during the war began moving people money and dope During the immediately in the post-conflict for survival So they had structures already established and they've grown and they've grown with the difference that They can work together now and so you what you see in this groups I've been looking at El Salvador was what was the far-right always really good at Laundering money and they were the rich guys. They knew how to move money. What was the left really good at? Assassinations kidnapping and moving people across borders clandestinely What do you have now the far-right laundering massive amounts of money on behalf of folks who come out of the Communist Party and elsewhere? Who move massive amount of dope, but they're highly specialized. They've been doing it for years and all of their If you want to do a predictive model of where drug trafficking is going to go Just look at traditional smuggling routes This this is where these guys will go because that's where they control especially if you study the Logistics routes of the wars those are gonna those are your major drug trafficking routes now And it's really fascinating to look at that But the difference now is that they could work together and that also poses enormous challenges to the state and I'll leave it there Great. Thank you, Doug Great. Okay. Thank you very much again. Thanks for the invitation to go back to those great Talks just now and before we leave the subject of Conflict because I was going to talk about Response to these issues I did want to note that if we're looking at the future of conflict in the region We need to look beyond the very serious profound issues related to organized crime and gangs but also look at things like Extractive industries and the conflict that that's creating particularly in the amazon basin We just saw four indigenous leaders killed last month over their advocacy to ban extractive industries are moving into their territory also climate change Is creating an increased competition over resources whether it's people who are fighting over water in the corridor secco Or people who are seeing their livelihoods diminished because of rising sea levels in the caribbean and finally We see conflict in areas of closing political space. I think you probably all saw the the Violent actually a very violent reaction of the state to student protests in venezuela several months back And we see that those kinds of closing spaces Leads to that kind of a violent interaction between state and civil society, which is very troubling So I just want to put a marker out there that it's it's It's even more complicated than what you might expect Um, what I thought I would Talk about is what's the u.s. Governments response to these this growing a set of issues that we're we're talking about Katie opened up the discussion by asking if we have the right tools and the right programs in place To address these issues. I think the short answer is no and certainly not at the scale that needs to We need to have um, I think if those of you you said that most of the folks here Were in the session this morning on urban violence So you've probably heard about some of the successes that that we have had Particularly on the prevention side on Working with you so I won't repeat that here But these are just little drops in the ocean in terms of of what needs to happen And I think the uac issue the unaccompanied children issue over the summer months really Woke up the interagency and grabbed the attention of of u.s. Government leaders to What the root causes of that kind of out migration is and that's something that we've been you know Saying for quite a long time is that Migration is just the symptom of the issue the issue is lack of good governance lack of economic opportunity And certainly lack of security And so we were then tasked by the white house to work as an interagency to come up with a new invigorated central america strategy Which we have done that uses those three pillars that I just mentioned as sort of the The framework for what we would do in the region if resources weren't in issue now, of course resources are a huge issue Which is why the president put forward a supplemental request over the summer months of 3.2 billion dollars To deal with the uac issue writ large But a good portion of that Was going to be dedicated to really investing in a very serious way in central america across those three lines of action That supplemental has not passed but the Administration has not given up. We're still going to try to find additional resources To invest in central america one could argue that we have under invested in central america for a very long time I think there are a lot of people Both on both sides of the hill who who feel that way and those of us who follow latin america would say the same thing We certainly say In response to questions as to why our resources have been going down in central america is because there's the rising Private sector and they're able to do a lot more through public private partnerships than we have before But this is beyond The reach of the private sector it's beyond the reach of the governments themselves And certainly the donor community and so we really need to have a new framework for working together in a very intensive way To try to have an impact on tamping down violence and creating safer more prosperous communities So what we're talking about is on the improved governance side is really tackling corruption And this is going to take great political will we cannot do this for these governments They have to stand up and be willing to tackle corruption And we can help them with that but that political will has to first and foremost be Be on on the side of these of these governments We can help with institutional capacity building, but again institutions are weak because people Benefit from week that's particularly in the justice sector And so you get convictions. You don't get cases coming to trial because people can buy off Investigators or prosecutors or what have you and so it is a bit of a vicious circle So political will and and policy and regulatory reform are huge Hugely important to improving governance in order to get a handle on on these issues going forward And then investing in economic growth we invested in we want to do much more on trade facilitation customs and regulatory reform Reform in the energy sector and then of course education and workforce development is so so important Particularly for the ninis need to work on the studio, you know this large cohort of youth who are not in school They're not working and you know they end up in gangs either as victims or perpetrators of violence And so that's a very important target group for us to to to be focused on I was also in central america the week before last And I was absolutely dumbstruck to learn this one statistic that I have been telling everybody every day since I've been back That only in honduras or miguel showed me some of the great work that otis is doing there In honduras only 25 percent of children go beyond the sixth grade 25 percent 75 percent of children have a sixth grade education or less to me That's the structural problem and that you've got to get a handle on because you cannot build a modern And prosperous economy on the backs of sixth graders You need to have a major restructuring of of access to to education. We do a lot of work through With private sector on workforce development for out-of-school youth, but still that kind of basic knowledge that And and learning that's required to move into modern economy with jobs or job or to be job creators is is missing In large part. So that's certainly very important and then finally, of course security now people might think that our Programs have been dominated by security over the say the last decade and while a lot of resources have been in the security We we, um, you know, we have also been trying to do some work on the economic growth and Better governance good governance. Um, but but not at the level it needs to be so getting Getting those three areas balanced and um, appropriately funded I think is going to Have a major has the potential for a major impact on resolving some of these issues Certainly under security police reform and community policing and violence prevention strategies are really important things to continue to build out Um, as Enrique Roy said this morning, we we have seen some early signs of success of our central america regional security strategy or car seat initiative I guess it's called Um, and so but but we are far far from getting those kinds of Investments to the scale that's needed to have an enduring impact And so what's required for the implementation of this strategy or a couple of things first Absolutely depends on leadership of the governments of the region This has to be a collective vision that has to be, you know, their political will that drives it And they've got to show that commitment as I mentioned before through The kind of cracking down on corruption and the policy reforms that only they can bring forward The role of the private sector instrumental and not just as corporate social responsibility in terms of We have had some great partners from the private sector who have helped rehab schools who have helped contribute You know technologies to classrooms But what we really need the private sector to do is and and they're doing some of that already very successfully is workforce development skills and Making sure that the kids who are coming out of whether it's sixth grade middle school or high school You know have the skill set they need from modern economy jobs And so we've seen um those kinds of investments really pay off for the youth that have been involved in those programs with very high incidents of you know 80 percent and above of kids who go through those workforce development programs who either find a job or go on to continue their studies We have to involve youth themselves. We can't design these youth programs for youth without youth So they've got to be embraced by youth and I think one uh, la juventude contra la violencia or youth against violence Which is now in every country represent is a is a movement as a youth movement throughout the region has been very successful in In reaching out to youth for prevention programs I also happen to see their work in in honduras and it was very very Impressive and you know they you can correct me if i'm wrong But the statistic they used was that only five percent of youth are involved in gangs And so that means that you know, you're working with the 95 percent of youth You want to keep out of those gangs and give them positive role model role models give them mentors Give them some sense of You know what it means to be cool in a different way than you know what they see in in their neighborhoods We have to involve of course communities Themselves and local authorities as well as the church That's the other thing that really impressed upon me the visit that we had with the violence Interruptors in the in the role that the church plays in giving cover to some of the youth Work that we're doing excuse me that we're doing in the region Um and fine and not finally a trilateral cooperation also very important We have columbians now that we're sponsoring through a trilateral cooperation between columbia mexico and united states to help them stand up victim response units within their human rights ministry To benefit from the lessons learned in columbia and how they did that and and that kind of transfer of Of knowledge has been quite helpful to the mexicans Same in brazil they're stepping forward to work with us in in el Salvador to help on Crime prevention based on the successful crime prevention activities That they've had in the favelas in rio So I think more of those kinds of south south levels of cooperation can be very helpful going forward And finally, I think the very important Role focus that we must maintain on women and the huge amount of gender based violence that exists in the region Is something that we cannot lose sight of that even though gangs or tend to be predominantly Populated by males and the victims tend to be primarily male There is a huge problem in the region with gender based violence And what we have seen in columbia as an example is that where you link Legal assistance to cycle social assistance and marry those two up So you have a survivor based method of dealing with That kind of crime We have seen a 600 increase in the reporting of gender based violence crime in through the centers that we're working with in columbia And in el salvador we have stood up a couple of victim assistance units to focus specifically on Gender based violence and there again because of the link up with legal assistance and psycho social assistance Coming together We have seen that 100 percent of those claims of gender based violence have actually been presented In a courtroom and 97 percent of those cases Led to convictions of the perpetrators So again, I think that was a very important lesson learned something that that needs to be scaled up But that's the issue. How do you get to scale? And as I say to get to scale you're going to need huge investments Certainly no one donor can take responsibility for this. It's going to require domestic resource Mobilization on on the part of governments in the area It's going to require the the investments of the private sector of donors writ large and as I mentioned, I think Also emerging donors who are standing up their own from the region who have a direct interest in in seeing This tide turned so I think I'll just leave it there and then we'll Great. Thank you so much all three of you. I think that's a very interesting albeit very sobering description of the magnitude Of the problem we're facing and thank you beth for reminding us of the other dimensions in which Conflict plays out in the region We've got about 20 minutes for questions But I just want to start by asking all of you to maybe just elaborate a little bit further on a point that Each of you touched on which is the question of institutional fragility You I think Doug you said at one point the state is going to have to make a very difficult choice between Something that's bloody and something that's unsavory One of you referred to or I think all of you in different ways referred to the state being either absent complicit or Or at very best incapable And beth you mentioned the ever present critical question of political will Given given this and given that we are in a in a Scenario in which resources are scarce. There are other policy priorities for the u.s. Government Latin America has seen a decline in resources over the last A couple of decades What what do you think is the most important? What what role can the u.s. Play and what should our priorities be in assistance? Given state weakness institutional fragility, but given the budget scenario that we're in right now sure Well, I think that that to me is you know the the hundred million dollar question. I think institutions are I think that getting to the root of the institutional weakness has to do with two things that beth mentioned, which is Primarily corruption and I think that one of the factors that I find in the discussion on central america particularly in the the cry for Plan columbia for for central america stuff They there's no the political will is not there to handle that and if you if those government If you look across the central america government and what you can document on the corruption that has flown out The soca government the funes government. It'll solve the door the other ones in the other countries There would be billions of dollars. They invest and they've stolen half of what they stole and invested the other half There we wouldn't have these problems. So I get really Frustrated when they keep saying we that we need all these massive new resources No, what we need is the political will on the part of leadership of these countries to stem the massive corruption That has deprived their people over the last two decades of the resources that they need It's not you know, I don't think it's it's rocket science But that goes to the heart of the judicial system The inability to pay police decent wages and why you have hugely larger private security forces and private intelligence forces than the the state police forces and the state intelligence services And why the justice system is so easily distorted I did a a piece for a prison magazine at ndu a couple years ago now We're saying arguing that the northern triangle had essentially become a transactional state Everything could be bought and sold the result of your judicial case did not depend on On the strength of your case and depend on what judge you could buy who could pay the most for the judge In almost everything across society has become transactional because that is what the state has become And I so I think that to me if you want to get at the institutional fragility you have to Deal is as Beth was talking about with it with corruption in ways that the u.s Government has never been willing to do before in these countries And that is have significant penalties associated with draw the funds, etc They're going through a big discussion It'll solve it or now of a certain things related to the millennial millennium fund because It's clear that Solventing government is not living up to the promises it made two weeks ago Do on how they're going to spend that money Yeah, so they're the mcc so there's already discussions over how do we handle Those type of things I think given the dire circumstances and the history and the lack of resources You know, I think I think our response has to be pretty uncompromising on this But yeah, I think this is this is the this is the critical question I I don't think we We know but I think that There are I guess I look at is there there are kind of two different ways you can go at it You can go at it. You can try and you can try and fix everything for them You can try and put laws in you try and train every one of their guys you can and that's obviously these are very expensive propositions Or you can think about it as They have most of what they need They They even have quite a few more than a few capable people In place to do it. We have examples of that The one shining example of that is claudia passi pass in Guatemala Basically taking the reins of an institution that had undergone some serious reform for sure Um, but essentially taking the reins of an institution that had largely been dysfunctional for for many many many many years and and making it If not largely functional certainly functional and and showing some incredible results But we have other situations in which they're they're not such big examples not taking over an entire institution But even examples in uh in Honduras, um, you know, where you have Small projects that that may be um that a lot of their costs are for personnel because they get x police and x prosecutors To work as interlocutors between neighborhoods that are suffering from great amounts of violence And those people who are suffering from the violence. So you get a trustworthy This is what i'm talking about a guarantor A trustworthy Interactor between these two spaces And you see results That isn't that expensive. I think in the scheme of things Creating in creating spaces and paying for perhaps at least the beginning some of these Um interlocutors who play an incredible role and lowering violence by incredible amounts too Um, so there are there are these instances, but but what what can you do? What what does oti do and usa id and others do? Um, I think that they can do things that are extremely important Um that go way beyond whether or not are we fixing it or not? I just think that that is That is just the wrong way to start. I think you need to give them the space To fix it What do you do? You need what it what does the prosecutor who's working with you want? They're human beings, right? So they want Space to do their work. They want political independence They don't want a larger political force Dictating what they prosecute and what they don't prosecute They don't want the political transition to determine whether or not they have a job, etc, etc They want independence To do their job, right? So you could promote that. I think there are a lot of different political diplomatic ways And also financial ways in which you could promote that And they want safety They want themselves to be safe. They want their families to be safe. They want their colleagues to be safe These these are things these are spaces. I think that we need to think about we need to think about how to create space For people who are dedicated and ready to act Um the space they need to operate and I think that is what eventually leads to long-lasting reform Thanks, Stephen Beth anything I uh was in Guatemala a couple months ago And I that was the my first foreign service assignment in the early 90s And I hadn't been back uh since I left so about 20 years and then um when I went back I was in zone 10 and it absolutely blew my mind the level of infrastructure and the incredible roads that between Guate and Sheila for example was all good. It was all paved. I mean, it was just where did all this money come from? This is amazing And we were on our way to the western highlands to see our health programs and the western highlands malnutrition rate for children under 5 Still 50 hasn't budged in 20 years. So right there, you know, that's your problem You've got you do have a lot of resources, but clearly they're not being spent in the areas where they're most needed Which is in social investments. I would say um, I would I agree with the the points of my colleagues here in terms of You know, they they do have resources they they can put Toward these problems that it is a question first and foremost of political will and I do believe there are change agents even in These countries that seem to you know are basically in hundreds I would say as close to a failed state But I but even there I think, you know, there are political champions and change agents Who want to do the right thing? I like to Think of all politics being local I think our great greatest chance for success and demonstration of success is at the municipal level I think, um, you know, we and we have seen this through our community violence prevention programs Is that if you can work at the community level at municipal level help them I just collect the the fees and the taxes that they already You know have on the books and then have an open participatory process about how those resources are going to get Invested back into the community engage your leadership whether it's from the schools the hospitals the You know the police civil society on How you can identify where your hot spots are where you need to put street lights How you can reclaim some public space from gang ownership If you could I you can do that at the local level and we've seen it time and time again And I think you know, it's building on that momentum and growing democracy from the grassroots up It's going to be I think the answer over the longer term Thank you very much. I'd like to open it up to the audience for any questions Okay I think there's a mic that's Or you can yeah use this one. I think Thanks so much to to the panelists for your For your interesting insights. I had a question. You mentioned, um, you know declining resources on part of the u.s Government. It's certainly not also a trend if you look into european donors and so on so I was wondering how you look into Existing and emerging let's say regional integration mechanisms, but also regional organizations like sika like the oas karikom We haven't talked a lot about the caribbean, but how would you see the role of the of those actors? Especially also regarding the linkages between the conflict issues And the organized crime issues because you touched up on both of them And there's also if you look at countries like you mentioned Guatemala and Salvador You also have linkages between structural conflict drivers and and issues of organized crime So how would you look into at the role of of regional? Integration mechanisms, but also the role of regional organizations to address These complex interlinkages Thanks Anyone would like to speak to that first or um, I Totally agreed that these are regional Problems and they require regional solutions because you know you push on gang violence in one place And I can just simply move across the border into someplace else and so the role of regional institutions is critically important to this particularly as it relates to Economic growth as I mentioned Trade harmonization customs and regulatory reform. I think we'll open up these countries for greater investments And so therefore SICA has a very important role to play, but also I think Developing these communities of practice across borders and identifying what is working We're having an evidence summit actually in Guatemala and I guess later this month To bring together practitioners from the united states from some of these Cities in the united states that have had great success in controlling gang violence Along with those partners who are working in the communities in the field with police with politicians with Other sectors that have a stake in this to begin to identify best practices and helping Identify those things that can travel if you will obviously to be adapted to local circumstances I think those kinds of things are an important way forward Any other questions and rike Yes, um, it's it's more a comment and it's probably Connecting with with experiences in the us and many also in latin america because I think what we have seen Is that we have been able to really show reductions in violence When we focus all the resources on the five percent and not in the 95 percent But we've seen the ceasefire approach or we've seen The upp approach really reducing or even even the truth since in the south or we can like it or not But when you focus on the guys on the five percent are really driving the violence And you find ways to intervene in that space You really have the opportunity to reduce it and I think Most of and I say this as a counterpart from from the mexican government when I was in that position I think where we the fear of change we're working with is working with that 95 And we're making someone in a in a meeting in a previous meeting said we're making the good our good guys We're making them better And I think we have to be much more aggressive in terms of finding solutions to work with that Identify that five percent and really work with them And and I think it's something we have to really think more in terms of the programming usa It's putting for for the gen das in these countries Any further it sounds actually steven that sounds um sort of similar to your point about the characterization of the good guys and the bad guys and needing to Be able to work with some of those guys that may not fit quite so clearly into our black and white spectrum Certainly and and and rica can can speak to this I'm sure but uh, you know, I think when you talk about the five percent you're talking about a clearly a sort of criminal Five percent clearly identified as such Yeah, and and when I talk about good Good criminals. I'm talking about people who work with the state actually There might be some very people some people were a little bit shy about who are actually Very high-level officials in the state and they they might play very You know Maybe even doubtful roles right now as we look at them right now What's the potential? What's the potential of of of some of these actors? I think that that some of the actors that came out of places like columbia Um, you know some of the heroes that came out of places like columbia We're not necessarily looked upon as heroes and the initial stages of intervention or You know serious government intervention at that time So I think that there is there are a lot of actors that are kind of walking this fine line In these very gray territories Um gray territories Because there's a lot of crime and corruption swirling around them And a lot of them have their jobs because they have been either they've either looked the other way Or they've participated directly in these types of activities But does that make them does that automatically disqualify them? Going forward and if we disqualified all of them, who are we going to work with? So this is this is what I say good a good criminal They they could even be a major sort of economic motor in a in a in a regional space You know they they own all of the major industries in that territory. Are you just going to turn your back on them? You know they there there is there's a lot of it's it's dubious and doubtful territory And especially as we look at it and it's very easy for us to make sort of broad sweeping judgments about About what's happening But if we look back at our own history again These these actors sometimes can play very important roles and and more important than that even is that the local actors Who are operating in those spaces with those people are already working with them? Are we going to ask them to disengage? With their operations of talking about economic political social interactions with these people So So these are these are gray spaces, and I think we need to I think we need to figure out how to operate in those gray spaces And and given your comment about the need for the usg and other donors to be very tough on corruption and to Possibly put into place some measures that we shied away with do you do you agree with Steven's idea that we need to work in this gray area My experience is yes, and the short answer is yes I think that uh My experience is there is most people would rather be legal than illegal But then this choice is offered to them and the positions where they are That is not a true choice to them there. That's not a choice that they can make Evenly balancing things out So I think in in having spent a lot of time in in columbian looking at some really good people and they'll solve it on Honduras Who are messed up in in things that we would be considered to be illegal because their survival depends on that And if there were conditions where they could disengage from that and go another direction They in a large number of people would go with them But they don't feel that the correlation the forces, you know the the balance of power In their particular circumstances allow them to do that So One of the challenges I think and then this goes to whether I think part of what Steve was saying If you can change the equation for them so that being and I think I mean to me being tough on corruption is You can't take this money and give it to your idiot brother-in-law and let him walk out the door with it because that's what we've always done You know if we put it for the road it's going to go for the road Now is that guy going to contract somebody we may not be particularly thrilled with because he has the equipment to do it I say if the road gets done, you're in good shape Uh, even close to down here in good shape But I think in the in the broader range of things if if if you change the equation for people I mean, I just got an email yesterday from a guy from that I used to deal with in the collie cartel I hadn't heard from from years. Oh, Douglas. How are you doing? Yeah, uh, remember when Gilberto told me I couldn't talk to you anymore. They were going to kill me. Ah, ha ha, you know But now he's moved on to another uh dimensions is like a respected Um Guy and an NGO that's doing a lot of good because he always told me if I you know, I they got my family You know, they know where I live. I can't leave this particular thing. I kept saying better though You know, why the hell you what these guys Can't do anything else you change the equation, especially in the rural areas Especially municipalities where they felt they were safe enough to move away You would see it an entirely different calculation going. Okay the state I could do with the state and live That would that be a lot more fun, you know I think we've got time for about one or two questions before bob comes to remind us that it's time to go upstairs I see one in over there Thanks very much for your comments. Um, I wanted to ask to what extent do you see civil society organizations that are working around peace justice and security Creating coalitions are working together to guarantee security in their in their own areas I I think civil society organizations have been in the forefront of of trying to tackle these issues in I give them a great deal of credit. I think they can't do it alone. And so I hence these community based security plans Are a way that through civil society organization Organizations and the church again, I was really impressed by the role and the role of the church both catholic and evangelical And the credibility that they have in these communities. They've got the convening power to bring in the other state institutions to work together to create these these plans that are Are having as you've heard from arike this morning a very direct impact on lowering levels of violence I would just say also that Where they are not present That is a huge amount of space that criminals Take advantage of very often So while we can talk about their importance They're they're hugely important to push push things forward and if they're not there you can see the result of that as well to two points one I know that there are better guys and worse guys or Good criminals or bad criminals But very often you can get yourself into the problem that they got to In in columbia where they ended up with the guys fighting the gorillas the patas Being they themselves Another force for evil So you got you got to be very careful about What you do with that second of all what has worked very effectively Again in columbia, but also On occasions in honduras has been the use of citizens as social auditors That is attempting to look at how a A construction project a road a school is built By getting the stakeholders in that school or that road To understand systems of how you control that And it's been done. I mean this is not something pie in the sky I think almost every local government use the usa program In columbia, well, I know that and to be the case in columbia has been doing that for the last decade or more And certainly on occasion as I said in honduras as well I think that that's I think certainly the the issue of the a you see and folks in columbia is a clear issue of how Slippery the slope is and how desperate it be I would argue on the citizen one of the huge changes that the gangs have brought in the region is the inability of citizens to Audit anything and especially as you move them as they move in and take over real political power in places Like ilo pongo and in other places in in el solvador And and they begin extorting the contracts out of the government There's no you're not going to get any citizen auditing out of anything because they'll die and are their family members Who are that they're committed to it? So I think the situation in the northern tier particularly Mitigates strongly for survival against the abilities of these groups to function not because they're chicken I think they've done magnificent work where they can but I think the self-preservation instinct takes over often and rightfully and And in those areas especially where you have people on the ground Who know exactly where you live who you see day-to-day who are extorting the woman who makes pupusas Who's starting the guy who come in for gas who's starting the guy who comes into coca-cola's starting the guy who comes in with water You're not going to mess with those people on a local level or ask to see how the books are run And I think that that is one of the great sort of Tragedies of what the gangs have brought in their neighborhoods is what little of that there had been and is much of an effort That has been has been Truncated very abruptly in those areas Thanks, Joel. Eduardo. Do you still have a question? Um, no just pointed out that we when we talk about violence we talk about always about the poor And neither presentation not today or that this morning talks about the financial sector Obviously financial sector the banks are so accomplished in the crime organized crime in the triangular norte that is a shame We are not doing anything on that you see All this money from extortion from ramsons all go to the banks And it's not other way to explain the boom of construction in these three poor countries And it's like we have double standards like satanized the poor violence. I'm not talking about The white collar our elites organized crime crime and I think um I wish ambassador brownfield was here to talk about what diane l is trying to do on that but obviously All the money coming from organized crime in the triangular norte goes through the banks and We are not talking about them. We are talking about the poor people that also the victims of the system. So that's Wanted to go I mean, yeah, absolutely agreed. You know We're doing a two-year project on elites and organized crime and obviously we're looking at how these things Are are intertwined. I think that the at the end of the day the The difficult thing is again sort of I think that those those actors can be incredibly important Not only you do you have to sort of monitor them But they also are incredibly important in in terms of agents of change So I think that there are What I would say about that is that there are leverage points there, too And I think that the us And other institutions Don't use the amount of leverage that they have In in the way that perhaps they should You know, there's there's bank issues. There's also visa issues. There are other ways to pressure I think For for reforms for more accountability for more things that are being that that can be pushed from the top So to say rather than think about the violence in the in the poorest neighborhoods. I agree with you I would just say I agree just very briefly agree as well I think one if you look at the distorting factors in the economies down there There's nothing more distorting than what petro caribe has done through alvanice and alba petrolios Where you have hundreds of millions of unaccounted Dollars flowing through and what they do is create an entirely parallel structure of the government I mean ortega talks about his 450 million dollar slush fund and they probably double that certainly alba petrolios and el solvador is Well over 600 million dollars probably closer to 800 million dollars. It doesn't go through the budgetary process There's no accountability and it's there. So yes, but because we were talking about the future of conflict is an arm conflict We got on what we did but I think that the the issue of the complicity of the elites What's in the work that steve and others are doing I think is fundamental to understanding how to ever Yeah, I mean my Yes, how the how do it fix this because unless that elite sector changes nothing else will ultimately change We have time for one last brief question um I actually interview uac's to try to get them for boner and presentation. Um, so and uh, as miss hogan said, um, most of them drop out around sixth grade Besides the economic reason is because what they tend to tell me is that They don't have access to a safe school or they're way too far away for them to get to one And so the problem for the question for me is um, how do you solve the the the the I guess the location of um of the secondary schools and Outs to be for them to be a little bit more outside on in the peripheries and also how do you like what actors What type of actors do you see primarily working towards that if there is a specific type of actor? You would like to work on that Just reminding us bobs in the back with his red card. I've let us run over so just a brief answer to that if you don't mind Yeah, I don't think there is an answer to that Um, honestly, um, I think we really need to apply our minds to that and when I say increased resources I I do agree that there are Lots of resources in the region, but I think to really tackle Primary and secondary education. It's going to require external investment in addition to domestic resource mobilization But clearly you need to build schools. You need to look at boarding schools. You know, you need to look at alternative learning environments I I think this is absolutely key to the longer term Resolution of many of the issues that we've talked about today Let's give a hand to our panelists. Thank you so much