COLOMBIA| New poverty figures released. On 17 May Colombia’s national statistics department (Dane) released a new report which found that Colombia’s poverty rate last year stood at 34.1% compared with 37.4% in 2010. According to Dane, while progress is still being made in reducing poverty in the country, the latest figures mean that 19.98m people (over a third of the country’s population of some 46m) are considered to be poor and indigent. Of these, 46.1% live in rural areas and 30.3% in urban areas. Dane director, Jorge Bustamante, explained that the department’s latest report was developed with a new methodology…

It is not usual for a high-ranking government official to lobby openly for a multi-agency response to a problem. That, though is what retired General Miguel Vásquez, deputy minister of citizen security, has been doing since soon after he took over his post last November. The problem is the proliferation of youth gangs, which Vásquez says are currently responsible for 80% of all crimes committed in the country. At first he pointed to the fact that they were responsible for most petty crime (delitos de bagatela) but by mid-May he was saying that they ‘drink, consume drugs, kill, strangle, murder’.…

As local communities in Cajamarca prepare for a region-wide strike in defence of the lagoons they fear will be affected by the Conga mining project, the Defensoría del Pueblo (public ombudsman’s office) reports that the number of social conflicts across Peru rose to 243 in April. The good news is that in 42% of the active conflicts the parties have opted for dialogue as a path towards resolution The Defensoría’s monthly report (Reporte Mensual de Conflictos Sociales) issued on 18 May reveals that 11 new conflicts in April raised the total that month to 243, of which 171 (70.4%) are…

Informal gold mining in Peru is not only being targeted as a threat to the environment and a source of fiscal evasion but also as a major illegal industry that generates more revenues than cocaine. At a recent symposium in Lima a proposal was floated to create a special body, similar to the anti-drugs commission Devida, to coordinate the efforts to ‘formalise’ that activity, currently dispersed among several government agencies. At the X Simposium del Oro held in mid-May in Lima, Elmer Cuba, director of Macroconsult (an affiliate of Global M&A), laid out a set of figures showing the extent…