Can I get a CICIES? No.
For the past year-plus, the United States has been leaning on the countries of the Northern Triangle to either extend (Guatemala) or enter into (Honduras and El Salvador) international agreements in order to strengthen their judicial systems so that they may better tackle corruption and general crime. The US Congress seemed to have gone so far as to make additional financial assistance dependent on those countries' pursuit of such commissions.
In Guatemala, the US successfully strong-armed former president Otto Perez Molina into extending CICIG's mandate. If it were just the US, it probably would not have worked. CICIG had demonstrated its importance to strengthen the country's institutions and uncovering multi-million dollar frauds and the Guatemalan people were demanding that it remain for at least another two years.
However, Honduras and El Salvador resisted US and domestic civil society pressure to enter into similar agreements with the United Nations. I wondered what was going to happen to US support since both countries seemed to have rejected US pressure to establish their own.
In the end, it looks like El Salvador, Honduras, and the US have found middle ground. Honduras and the Organization of American States have agreed to the establishment of the Support Mission Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (Misión de Apoyo Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad en Honduras – MACCIH) while El Salvador has agreed to a project supported by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). El Salvador had also agreed to a US Agency for International Development program last year.
In Guatemala, the US successfully strong-armed former president Otto Perez Molina into extending CICIG's mandate. If it were just the US, it probably would not have worked. CICIG had demonstrated its importance to strengthen the country's institutions and uncovering multi-million dollar frauds and the Guatemalan people were demanding that it remain for at least another two years.
However, Honduras and El Salvador resisted US and domestic civil society pressure to enter into similar agreements with the United Nations. I wondered what was going to happen to US support since both countries seemed to have rejected US pressure to establish their own.
In the end, it looks like El Salvador, Honduras, and the US have found middle ground. Honduras and the Organization of American States have agreed to the establishment of the Support Mission Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (Misión de Apoyo Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad en Honduras – MACCIH) while El Salvador has agreed to a project supported by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). El Salvador had also agreed to a US Agency for International Development program last year.
The U.N. on Monday announced a U.S.-financed pilot program to help fight corruption in El Salvador, a Central American country so torn by drugs and gang warfare that it ranks among the most violent in the world.
The three-year program, with an unknown price tag, will support the government of leftist President Salvador Sanchez Ceren but lacks the broad investigative powers of the U.N.-backed International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG).I've been a big fan of CICIG for the last few years. However, I don't seem to have been in the majority as CICIG didn't get the reputation of a successful anti-corruption body until last year's investigations. I'm willing to give the two new commissions the benefit of the doubt even though their mandates are not nearly as strong as CICIG's is in Guatemala. That's what the Salvadoran and Honduran governments want. Let's make them as successful as possible. If the programs demonstrate their importance or expose government intransigence, there's no reason that we won't be able to renegotiate stronger mandates.
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