Caribbean & Central America - January 2024

We begin the January 2024 edition of the Latin American Regional Report: Caribbean & Central America in Costa Rica which finished 2023 with an unprecedented 907 homicides, up from 654 in 2022 – itself a record year.... Read More

Costa Rica finished 2023 with an unprecedented 907 homicides, up from 654 in 2022 – itself a record year.... Read More

In early January Honduras’s security minister, Gustavo Sánchez, boasted that there were 631 fewer homicides in 2023 compared with 2022, to total 3,030.... Read More

Environmental organisations in Panama and beyond have claimed a major victory after Panama’s supreme court (CSJ) struck down legislation in late November authorising a new contract between Canadian mining company First Quantum Minerals (FQM)’s Panamanian subsidiary, Minera Panamá S.A.... Read More

Amid uncertainty as to whether Bernardo Arévalo, who convincingly won the 20 August presidential run-off election on an anti-corruption pledge, would assume office on 14 January (for more discussion of this see our sister Weekly Report), late last year Guatemala’s legislature acted on a constitutional court (CC) order to pick the new supreme court (CSJ) by mid-December.... Read More

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Corte-IDH) has ordered Guatemala to adopt new laws on indigenous land rights in a ruling on the country’s massive Fénix nickel mine, which could have implications for other mining projects in the country and the region more widely.... Read More

Nayib Bukele is expected to easily win a controversial second presidential term in El Salvador’s February election and the country’s economic prospects have improved slightly, although his policies could spell trouble in the future.... Read More

After much prevarication over many months from the international community on how to respond to the multifaceted security and political crisis in Haiti, in October the United Nations (UN) Security Council (UNSC) did vote to send a Kenya-led international security support mission to the highly distressed country.... Read More

Cuba’s economy had a tough time in 2023 and a package of new austerity measures unveiled in December will do relatively little to bring relief in 2024.... Read More

Prime Minister Andrew Holness ended the year by hailing Jamaica’s good economic performance, highlighting strong growth, low unemployment, and healthy public works programmes including road improvements and residential home building.... Read More

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), an international organisation headquartered in Switzerland, has published economic assessments of proposals to reduce plastics pollution in Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, and St Lucia.... Read More

*** SOME PROGRESS AT COP28.... Read More

NICARAGUA | New FTA with China takes effect.... Read More