Graft allegedly exists at the highest levels of the Honduran government: in April 2022, the government extradited former President Juan Orlando Hernandez to the United States to face drug- and weapons-trafficking charges.ĭespite launching CICIES, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and his administration have similarly faced accusations of graft, and experts warn of rising authoritarianism under the highly popular leader. The mandate for Honduras’s anticorruption body was likewise left to expire in 2020, months before the country eased penalties for drug trafficking and certain corruption. After CICIG began investigating President Jimmy Morales, he allowed its mandate to expire in 2019, and Guatemalan judicial officials who promote the rule of law have faced retribution. However, security forces have continued to violate human rights without consequence.Īll three countries have backslid on their progress. Honduras also established an anticorruption committee with the OAS, known as the Mission to Support the Fight Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH), and it fired 40 percent of its police as part of sweeping reforms beginning in 2016. Critics said the body-called the International Commission Against Impunity in El Salvador (CICIES)-had limited power, questionable independence, and opaque inner workings, but it did help uncover mismanagement in pandemic-related government spending.
In 2019, El Salvador announced its own anticorruption panel, which was backed by the Organization of American States (OAS), a regional bloc. In 2006, Guatemala and the United Nations agreed to create the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), an independent investigatory body that helped convict more than four hundred people, including a sitting president, and contributed to a significant reduction in Guatemala’s homicide rate.
Endemic corruption has long been a drag on the region’s economies. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that they suffered economic contractions of between 1.5 percent and 8.6 percent in 2020.Ĭorruption. Northern Triangle countries borrowed heavily to roll out support programs, but institutional weaknesses impeded their delivery of aid and public services. However, monthslong COVID-19 restrictions paralyzed the vast informal sectors that keep regional economies afloat, fueling poverty and food insecurity. GDPs were rising across the Northern Triangle before the pandemic. But its outcomes are disputed and difficult to measure.
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Aimed at addressing the drivers of irregular migration, A4P made commitments to increase production, strengthen institutions, expand opportunities, and improve public safety. The region’s most significant coordinated effort to reduce economic instability has been the U.S.-backed Plan of the Alliance for Prosperity (A4P). Successive governments have tried various development-centric, tough-on-crime interventions to tackle the region’s enduring problems, but they have yielded limited gains.Įconomic instability. How have Northern Triangle governments attempted to address these problems? Looking ahead, experts say that population growth and climate change, which is linked to an increasing number of extreme weather events, could put further strain on Northern Triangle economies, pushing more people to migrate. As of 2020, El Salvador and Honduras had some of Latin America’s highest rates of femicide, or gender-based murders of women and girls. Women in the region are also fleeing gender-based violence, which the pandemic has exacerbated.
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