Once known as the murder capital of the world, El Salvador was named one of the safest countries in 2023 by Gallup, a US-based global analytics and advisory firm.
As the only Latin American country included in the top 10 safest countries, 88% of Salvadoran survey respondents answered that they felt safe walking alone at night in the area where they live, as per Gallup’s Global Safety Report. According to the firm, people’s perceptions of safety are highly related to hard data, and contribute to the firm’s Law and Order Index.
The Index, which highlights El Salvador as 15th on the global ranking with a score of 89, considers indicators like income, health, food security and homicide metrics, in addition to perceptions of safety.
“Although the country has drifted toward becoming a police state, the government’s crackdown on gangs — incarcerating approximately 2% of the country’s population — has made the country safer, for now,” the report indicates.
President Bukele’s safety strategies
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele declared an initial month-long state of emergency in March 2022 due to heightened gang violence and a wave of murders, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR). So far, this state of emergency has been renewed 30 times, the latest of which was announced by the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly on October 4.
“To date, this tool has allowed 604 days without homicides and the arrests of more than 82 thousand people linked to gangs. In addition, it has positioned the country among the safest in the world,” stated the Assembly’s press release announcing the extension.
The Organization of American States (OAS) also attributed the unprecedented reduction of homicide rates in El Salvador to the state of emergency, “which prioritizes a punitive model to face the challenges of citizen’s safety,” in their September 2024 El Salvador report.
The state of emergency suspended several Salvadoran rights and freedoms, as per the OAS:
- Right of assembly;
- Freedom of association;
- Right to be informed of the reasons for detention;
- Inviolability of correspondence and telecommunications.
The report also highlighted that the Salvadoran government acted legitimately under international law when establishing the state of emergency in 2022, although it also called for the prompt re-establishment of suspended rights, given that “the critical episode in 2022 does not reflect the current security situation in El Salvador,” and that the state of emergency “could not become a permanent state policy.”
Nonetheless, international human rights watchdog Rights and Security also highlights that although the decrease in the country’s violence indicators is backed almost exclusively via homicide rates, other forms of violence have prevailed, including domestic violence.
Contested data
The University Observatory for Human Rights, which is financially backed by the European Union and USAID and works to compile, systematize, validate and disseminate truthful information about human rights in El Salvador, denounced that the state of emergency prompted grave setbacks.
Among them, the Observatory highlighted an increase of 134.8% in fatality rates in 2023, as the “official data reported by State authorities suffers from under-recording, since they do not take into account all violent deaths that occurred during the year.” Among the excluded figures are the deaths of civilians in armed confrontations, incarcerated people, and people classified as gang members.
The Observatory’s 2023 annual report also suggests that the information shared by the Salvadoran government on homicide rates is untrustworthy because, “since 2022, the national police has cataloged all data related to homicide as reserved.” This has made contrasting these rates with those obtained through filed requests for information impossible.
Regardless, the entity does recognize a constant decrease in homicide cases, with the rate per 100,000 people going from 21.2 in 2020 to 4.9 in 2023.
Alleged human rights violations
El Salvador has been called out for massive human rights violations, “including thousands of arbitrary detentions and violations of due process, as well as torture and ill-treatment,” according to Amnesty International.
In a report published on December 2023, the organization detailed a rise in systemic detentions, forced disappearances and instances of torture since the introduction of the state of emergency, in addition to a crackdown on freedom of expression, which has put journalists and activists in danger.
The United States Department of State also recognized these allegations in their El Salvador 2023 Human Rights Report, signaling arbitrary killings, cruel treatment by security forces, harsh and life-threatening prison conditions, and extensive gender-based violence as some of the barriers which have undermined President Bukele’s security strategy.
The Socorro Jurídico Humanitario foundation, which provides free legal advice to innocent Salvadorans criminalized by the state of emergency, has reported 315 deaths of incarcerated people since the establishment of the measure in 2022. The most prevalent causes of death signaled by the association are violence and lack of medical attention, although unknown causes of death have increased in 2024.
“These people only had the right to a hearing for the imposition of captivity measures, after which they died under the guardianship of the State,” the foundation stated.
Amnesty International also explained that the widespread pattern of arbitrary arrests targets people from marginalized communities especially, which already suffer from crime and extreme poverty.
The conditions that inmates experience within the prisons have also been heavily denounced by human rights organizations. As per the OAS, incarcerated individuals are stripped down to their underwear, placed in small cells where they sleep on the floor, and do not have access to clean water or food.
The government of El Salvador has responded to these allegations by stating that they have considered the international standards for penitentiary facilities, and that they provide for basic necessities, according to a diplomatic note sent to the OAS.
“Human rights NGOs must know that we will destroy these murderers and their collaborators, we will put them in prison and they will never come out. We do not care about their pitiful reports, their journalists, puppet politicians or the famous international community,” stated president Bukele in 2023.
Gang violence in El Salvador
After decades of civil war with leftist guerrillas, which resulted in over 75,000 deaths, the Salvadoran government signed a peace agreement with these armed groups in 1992, as per Insight Crime, a think tank that investigates organized crime in the Americas.
This, however, gave rise to street gangs, commonly referred to as “maras,” according to the think tank. The MS13 and the Barrio 18 gangs especially targeted poor, urban youths, and marginalization, poverty and lack of access to basic necessities led to these groups’ growth.
The gangs mainly engaged in extortion, domestic drug distribution, and kidnapping, as said the think tank. However, in March 2012, the government secretly brokered a truce between both gangs, granting concessions to imprisoned gang members in exchange for a decrease in violent activities.
Regardless, the country’s homicide rate peaked in 2015, with a rate of 105 homicides per 100,000 people, as reported by Human Rights Watch.
The organization also noted that while previous administrations’ responses to criminal responses have oscillated between obscure negotiations with gangs and iron-fisted security policies, both have resulted in renewed violent cycles.
The violence cycle that prompted the establishment of the state of emergency measure in 2022 followed the Bukele administration’s negotiations with the country’s three largest gangs, in which the president offered prison privileges and employment opportunities in exchange for lowering the homicide rate and electoral support, according to Human Rights Watch.
