SAN SALVADOR – The last time the Committee against Torture of the United Nations (UN) evaluated El Salvador regarding human rights was thirteen years ago.
This November 17 and 18, the Salvadoran State will once again submit to the scrutiny of the multilateral organization, with an exception regime in tow and hundreds of complaints for alleged human rights violations.
Prior to the 75th session in Geneva, Switzerland, the UN will review a report prepared by a coalition of civil human rights organizations such as Cristosal and the Foundation for Due Process (DPLF), which have also attended on November 15 face-to-face with the UN.
According to the report presented by the organizations, some of the issues to be evaluated by the Committee are, among others, “the lack of judicial independence, militarization and the use of force, the situation of persons deprived of liberty, the weakening of the Attorney General’s Office for the Defense of Human Rights in El Salvador and gender-based violence”.
One of the 20 recommendations contained in the report is to investigate “all cases where civilians are injured or killed by police or military forces” in El Salvador.
The organizations also call on El Salvador to ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons against Enforced Disappearances.
Why can the UN evaluate El Salvador?
The international treaties signed by El Salvador become laws of the Republic, according to article 144 of the Constitution of that country, and therefore oblige the State to act in accordance with what is demanded in the treaty.
Although the Salvadoran Congress continues without ratifying the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture, El Salvador continues to be a “State party”, and according to legislator René Portillo Cuadra, it is obliged to take measures to prevent acts of torture in its territory. .
El Salvador is approaching eight months in an emergency regime whose purpose is to capture 83,000 gang members responsible for the latest wave of violence that occurred at the end of March, in which 88 Salvadorans were killed in one weekend.
But the regime, which according to the Salvadoran Constitution must be maintained if the situation that caused it continues to occur, now seems to have a “permanent and indefinite” character, as the WOLA organization put it. A fact that has led to hundreds of complaints of torture and deaths.
“During these months, the executive power has used the State security forces to implement a policy against violence from the repression, persecution and stigmatization against the population; thereby aggravating the crisis of democratic governance and human rights that the country is going through”, indicated WOLA.
Despite the accusations of human rights violations, El Salvador maintains low levels of homicidal violence during the period of Nayib Bukele.
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