Weekly Report - 4 February 2021 (WR-21-05)

Colombia’s former president Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018) – a key architect of the momentous 2016 peace agreement with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) guerrilla group – described the news this week that eight demobilised Farc leaders had been charged by the transitional justice system (JEP) with war crimes and crimes against humanity as “a historic precedent for transitional justice and the resolution of armed conflicts worldwide”.... Read More

One of the frontrunners in Peru’s presidential race, charged with murder, was embroiled in scandal this week when evidence emerged of witness tampering in the case.... Read More

The detention of two Guyanese fishing boats by the Venezuelan navy on 21 January quickly became a significant flashpoint in the growing tensions between the two countries, with Venezuela’s foreign ministry on 31 January accusing Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali of “seeking to fabricate a conflict in the region”.... Read More

President Jair Bolsonaro was elected in 2018 promising an end to the clientelist practices that have always dominated the relationship between the executive and the legislature in Brazil.... Read More

Efraín Alegre, the president of the Partido Liberal Radical Auténtico (PLRA), Paraguay’s main opposition party, has decided to take a stance against what he believes is an attempt by the judiciary to persecute him politically.... Read More

The ongoing allegations of the systematic violation of human rights by the provincial government in Argentina’s northern Formosa province is producing political ructions.... Read More

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is moving full speed ahead with plans to roll back the 2013 energy reform of his predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018).... Read More

The spectre of political violence that haunts El Salvador’s young democracy is hanging over the country once again.... Read More

“This appointment…calls into question the integrity of Guatemala’s highest court, thereby weakening the rule of law and undermining a key US priority”.... Read More

“The harshest conviction for a political crime since the Black Spring of 2003.” Alluding to a notorious crackdown under the government, then led by the late Fidel Castro (1959-2008), in which 75 dissidents were imprisoned, Spain-based NGO Observatorio Cubano de Derechos Humanos (OCDH) was responding to hefty prison sentences recently handed down to three dissidents for allegedly vandalising busts of José Martí and other national heroes.... Read More

The Honduran national electoral council (CNE) and the foreign minister, Lisandro Rosales, made an “urgent appeal” on 29 January to all political parties to “strictly comply” with biosecurity measures.... Read More

Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega appealed to the national assembly on 30 January to create a ministry for space, the moon, and other celestial bodies, which he said was necessary to “defend supreme national interests”.... Read More

“Depriving people of their freedom and setting conditions for their release, as well as their wellbeing, integrity, and life, was a war crime, especially the taking of hostages.”... Read More