LAP Director Cyndi Arnson participated in a presentation of a UNDP report on citizen security. She commented on the strength of government institutions in Latin America and the need for judicial reform.
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Moreno noted that the report offers ten solutions to address the problem of insecurity, but also makes clear that "there is no single answer, a panacea, to address this problem."
The World Bank Director for Central America, Carlos Jaramillo, said the problem of insecurity "is probably the number one obstacle to economic growth in Latin America."
Director Jaramillo said that Latin America is the most violent region in the world, and recalled that the region contains seven of the ten most violent countries in the world. "The continent has only 8 percent of the world's population but 20 percent of world’s homicides," said Jaramillo, who also criticized countries that rely exclusively on "heavy handed" policies to solve their security problems when past experience has shown that these policies do not work.
The Director for the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Cynthia Arnson, said the report "identifies weak state institutions, particularly Judiciary and Police, and how impunity and corruption continue shrinking public confidence in the system." Director Arnson also noted that the report highlights the large number of people in the region who are imprisoned without being processed, which in some cases exceeds 70 percent of the prison population.
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For the complete press release, please click here.
The Wilson Center’s prestigious Latin America Program provides non-partisan expertise to a broad community of decision makers in the United States and Latin America on critical policy issues facing the Hemisphere. The Program provides insightful and actionable research for policymakers, private sector leaders, journalists, and public intellectuals in the United States and Latin America. To bridge the gap between scholarship and policy action, it fosters new inquiry, sponsors high-level public and private meetings among multiple stakeholders, and explores policy options to improve outcomes for citizens throughout the Americas. Drawing on the Wilson Center’s strength as the nation’s key non-partisan policy forum, the Program serves as a trusted source of analysis and a vital point of contact between the worlds of scholarship and action. Read more
