Full Coverage: Central America

31.03.2004

© Amnesty International USA

This week students from around the country have joined Amnesty International in denouncing violence against women in Mexico, focusing on the cases of the hundreds of women killed in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua, for which not a single arrest has been made.

25.03.2004 On 1st December 2000, Vicente Fox Quesada (Partido de Acción Nacional (PAN) became the Constitutional President of the United States of Mexico. The victory of Fox marked the end of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional’s (PRI) 71 year command over Mexican politics.
From: European Union

23.03.2004 Ana Maria Pizarro, gynecologist and Nicaraguan women's health activist, writes that public policies toward women's quality of life, health, and education have veered away from rights and empowerment due in large part to the erosion of the secular state.

22.03.2004 O PPP é uma parte mais importante do jogo neoliberal porque os emperramentos do comércio livre se estendem além da América do Norte e do NAFTA ao fim dentro do território do CAFTA e da ALCA. Similar ao IIRSA na América do Sul, o PPP fornece a infra estrutura necessária para a implementação dos acordos de livre comércio.

22.03.2004 The PPP is an ever more important piece of the neo-liberal jigsaw as the bindings of free trade extend beyond North America and NAFTA to close in on the territory of CAFTA and the FTAA. Similar to the IIRSA in South America, the PPP provides the infrastructure necessary to implement free trade agreements.

15.03.2004 Plans for a potentially devastating dam in Belize are going ahead, after a split vote by the UK Privy Council (still the highest authority for the island). The three-judge majority acknowledged that the proposed dam would flood an area scientists say is '”one of the most biologically rich and diverse regions remaining in Central America”.

11.03.2004 Under the proposed U.S.- Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), parties have little or no incentive to strengthen their weak labor laws, protect women workers from discrimination, or improve the enforcement of domestic labor law. The agreement should--but fails to--protect the rights of workers producing goods for export, argues this briefing paper.

05.03.2004 México debe redoblar sus esfuerzos para arrestar a ex funcionarios acusados de cometer abusos en el pasado, señaló Human Rights Watch en una carta dirigida al Presidente Vicente Fox. En la reunión que sostendrá esta semana con el Presidente George W. Bush, Fox debe solicitar a Estados Unidos que comparta la información que pueda ser de utilidad para el Fiscal Especial encargado de investigar los crímenes cometidos durante la "guerra sucia".

04.03.2004 Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala have established repressive measures against youth gangs, yet the countries do not offer children the opportunities to which they have a right as an alternative to prevent their involvement in these gangs.

03.03.2004 The 2003 U.S. Department of State Human Rights Reports for Central America, released February 25, 2004, strongly criticize the Central American governments’ failure to enforce internationally recognized labor rights. Yet the U.S. failed to include adequate labor enforcement mechanisms in the proposed U.S.-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).
From: WOLA

01.03.2004 The current crisis in international coffee prices has hit rural Mexico hardest where people are poorest and living conditions most precarious. Of Mexico's coffee-growing townships, 84% register high or very high levels of poverty. In contrast to the large plantation farming common in other parts of the world, in Mexico most coffee growers are smallholders and 65% are indigenous.