Papers by Sofia Martinez Fernandez
Política y violencia perpetua en El Salvador , 2017
La intensa guerra de pandillas continúa azotando a El Salvador, inmutable ante las sucesivas polí... more La intensa guerra de pandillas continúa azotando a El Salvador, inmutable ante las sucesivas políticas gubernamentales de mano dura y represión militarizada. Para aliviar la crisis crónica de inseguridad en el país se necesita más inversión en estrategias de prevención integral de la violencia, al igual que en la promoción de alternativas económicas a la violencia criminal.
* Este informe fue fruto de un proceso colaborativo de un amplio equipo de expertos y editores de la ONG International Crisis Group. La investigación cuantitativa fue elaborada por la economista Maria Micaela Sviatschi.
El Salvador's Politics of Perpetual Violence, 2017
Intense gang warfare continues to plague El Salvador, undeterred by successive governments’ heavy... more Intense gang warfare continues to plague El Salvador, undeterred by successive governments’ heavy-handed and militarised repression policies. More investment in holistic violence prevention strategies and economic alternatives to criminal violence are necessary if the country's chronic insecurity crisis is to be alleviated.
* Although I was the main contributor to the report and the one responsible for the writing and the field research, the final piece was a collaborative effort of a wider team of Crisis Group of staff members and consultants. The quantitative research was undertaken by US-based Economist Maria Micaela Sviatschi.
Do the Numbers Lie? Mistrust and Military Lockdown after Honduras’ Disputed Poll, 2017
With massive protests, armed clashes and a government-declared state of emergency, Honduras is in... more With massive protests, armed clashes and a government-declared state of emergency, Honduras is in social and political chaos after the 26 November general elections.
In this Q&A originally published in Crisis Group’s website during the 2017 post-election crisis in Honduras, I explained what has sparked the protests and its potential effect on armed violence.
El Salvador: la vida en territorio de la Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), 2018
Op-ed published in Open Democracy about my experience conducting field research in a gang-control... more Op-ed published in Open Democracy about my experience conducting field research in a gang-controlled neighbourhood in the outskirts of San Salvador (El Salvador).
La profecia autocumplida de Trump sobre las pandillas, 2018
Artículo de opinión publicado en EFE Firmas.
Hacia una política de seguridad sostenible en El Salvador, 2018
Documento de Opinión 42/2018 publicado en el Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos (IEEE).
... more Documento de Opinión 42/2018 publicado en el Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos (IEEE).
Veintiséis años después de los acuerdos de paz que pusieron fin al conflicto armado, El Salvador continúa siendo un país azotado por la violencia. Durante las últimas cuatro legislaturas, tanto la antigua guerrilla del FMLN como el partido conservador ARENA han lanzado diferentes planes de seguridad para acabar con el problema de las maras, los principales grupos armados en el país responsables de casi 16 000 asesinatos en los últimos cuatro años. Sin embargo, el efecto de los diferentes planes de seguridad ha sido limitado al no conseguir una reducción sostenible de los homicidios durante más de dos años seguidos. Entre los principales escollos encontrados por el Estado salvadoreño se encuentra la desigual financiación de las medidas de los diferentes planes de seguridad y la falta de un enfoque estructural sobre el problema de la violencia, así como factores estructurales y el creciente deterioro del tejido social. En este artículo se analizan los condicionantes de la situación de seguridad en El Salvador a la vez que se plantean posibles acciones para promover esfuerzos de pacificación integrales, multipartidarios y sostenibles en uno de los países más violentos del mundo.
Mass Deportations Only Fuel A Cycle Of Violence And Migration, 2018
Op-ed published in The Huffington Post about the consequences of mass deportations of undocumente... more Op-ed published in The Huffington Post about the consequences of mass deportations of undocumented Central American migrants and asylum-seekers from the US.
Today’s Migrant Flow Is Different, 2018
Op-ed published in The Atlantic. Poverty has driven many previous waves of migrants from their ho... more Op-ed published in The Atlantic. Poverty has driven many previous waves of migrants from their homes. What’s new now is the rise of the gangs.
Life Under Gang Rule in El Salvador, 2018
Over the last three years, gang violence has killed nearly 20,000 people in El Salvador, propelli... more Over the last three years, gang violence has killed nearly 20,000 people in El Salvador, propelling tens of thousands northward in search of safety. With U.S. help, the Salvadoran government should try to counter gangs with crime prevention as much as with law enforcement.
*This commentary was illustrated by award-winning artist Molly Crabapple. I was the leading author of the text, but the final product was a collaborative effort from a wider group of Crisis Group analysts and editors.
Nicaragua: caminos hacia el diálogo después de la revuelta aplastada, 2018
El descontento popular en Nicaragua es alto después de que las protestas callejeras en abril fuer... more El descontento popular en Nicaragua es alto después de que las protestas callejeras en abril fueron aplastadas en una brutal represión gubernamental. Para evitar más disturbios, el presidente Ortega debe implementar las reformas electorales acordadas, mientras que los actores internacionales mantienen la presión diplomática para crear condiciones para el diálogo.
* Este reporte fue fruto de un proceso colaborativo por parte de un amplio equipo de analistas y editores en Crisis Group en el cual yo fui la autora principal y la responsable de la investigación de campo en Nicaragua.
A Road to Dialogue After Nicaragua’s Crushed Uprising, 2018
Public resentment is high in Nicaragua after street protests in April were crushed in a brutal go... more Public resentment is high in Nicaragua after street protests in April were crushed in a brutal government crackdown. To prevent further unrest, President Ortega should implement agreed electoral reforms while international actors maintain diplomatic pressure to create conditions for dialogue.
* Please note that, although I was the main contributor for this report, it was a collaborative effort from a wider group of Crisis Group analysts and editors.
Conviviendo con Violencia Armada: Un Estudio a Nivel Comunitario sobre Violencia Arma- da y el Uso Indebido de las Armas Pequeñas y Ligeras en el Triángulo Norte de Centroamérica., 2019
Reporte para la ONG humanitaria The HALO Trust publicado en Junio de 2019 gracias a la financiaci... more Reporte para la ONG humanitaria The HALO Trust publicado en Junio de 2019 gracias a la financiación de la cooperación Suiza en Honduras. Versión en español.
How Return Fuels a Vicious Migration Cycle in North Central America, 2019
Paper prepared for the June 2019 Workshop ‘Vicious Cycles: Toward a
Research Agenda on Return and... more Paper prepared for the June 2019 Workshop ‘Vicious Cycles: Toward a
Research Agenda on Return and Repeat Displacement’ organised by the Perry World House (University of Pennsylvania) made possible (in part) by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Living with Armed Violence: A Community Level Study Into Armed Violence and The Misuse of Small Arms and Light Weapons In The Northern Triangle Of Central America, 2020
In this report that I had the privilege to research and write we found extensive evidence about h... more In this report that I had the privilege to research and write we found extensive evidence about how arms disrupt communities in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador - and also lead to forced migration. This project has been the result of a year of teamwork with my colleagues from The HALO Trust and thanks to the generous support from the Swiss Cooperation Agency in Honduras.
Here are some of our most relevant findings:
- There is a significant link between small arms and lethal violence in Central America. Between 2013 and 2018, 80% of all violent killings were committed with a firearm.
- Despite the link between the availability of firearms and murder rates, the regions' governments have generally treated arms control as a separate issue from broader security plans, which has exacerbated the chronic violence crisis in the region.
- Based on data analysis from
@SmallArmsSurvey (see page 5 of the report for methodology https://bit.ly/Arms-Central-America) ordinary citizens and private security companies own on average 73% of the total number of registered firearms in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
- Our interviewees in the field explained that illegal firearms are widely available, mainly because of high demand due to perceptions of insecurity, weak gun control mechanisms and failings in the disarmament process following the countries' civil wars in the 90s.
- It is ultimately criminal groups who benefit most from the availability of firearms in the communities. Thanks to their access to firearms, gangs are able to exercise tight territorial control and enforce extortion, which is the main source of income to buy even more arms.
- Although men are more vulnerable to armed violence than women, the latter often become collateral victims. Our report includes brave testimonies from women who told us that they did not feel safe either in the street or at home as a consequence of this violence.
- Perhaps the most striking testimonies from the research are from children as young as 10 years old, who considered guns to be the best form of self-defence. We asked many of them to make anonymous drawings of how life feels in the community (see images inside the report).
- As a consequence of gun availability, many Central Americans are considering fleeing home towards Mexico and the US, increasing the humanitarian emergency in the region.
Herederas de los conflictos armados de la década de los ochenta e impulsadas por las deportacione... more Herederas de los conflictos armados de la década de los ochenta e impulsadas por las deportaciones masivas desde EEUU, las maras son un problema de primera magnitud en El Salvador, Honduras y Guatemala. Las políticas de ‘mano dura’ son tan inútiles como dañinas.
Central American gangs are responsible for brutal acts of violence, abuse of women and forced dis... more Central American gangs are responsible for brutal acts of violence, abuse of women and forced displacement of thousands. Governments must go beyond punitive measures and address the social and economic roots of gang culture, tackle extortion schemes and invest in communities.
*Please note this is not a report authored by myself, but a collaborative paper by many individuals from the International Crisis Group.
Drafts by Sofia Martinez Fernandez
Guatemala’s ‘Peace Trap’: A Bottom-Up Qualitative Study of Violence After Post- Conflict From Galtung’s Conceptual Framework, 2020
This dissertation discusses to what extent Guatemala can be considered at peace 25 years after th... more This dissertation discusses to what extent Guatemala can be considered at peace 25 years after the signing of the peace accords. My research question departs from the contrast between the official ‘at peace’ status and the reality on the ground with epidemic levels of violence and continuously forced displacement. The lack of attention from Conflict Studies to Guatemala’s violence after the post-conflict has been parallel to an intellectual takeover by ‘citizen security’ experts who have diagnosed this issue as mostly criminal. This paper takes an alternative approach and challenges the criminalisation narrative based on two factors: the continuities of violence from the war era which partly explain current violence; and the counter-productive legacies of the liberal peacebuilding model that deepened the socio-economic root causes of the problem. My thesis is that Guatemala’s ‘at peace’ status has become a trap by scholars and policy-makers because it has eclipsed a pending debate on why violence after post-conflict has endured for so long. I approach this question from a bottom-up qualitative research design based on 8 focus groups with women and young adults from a hotspot neighbourhood near Guatemala City in which participants discussed their everyday experiences with violence and expectations of peace. There were three main findings: one, the nuances of community-level violence with blurred lines between perpetrators and victims; second, the call for structural reforms such as gender equality and climate change rather than anti-crime solutions to solve local violence; and thirdly, the importance of sexism and cult to firearms as a symbolic enabler of brutality. I analysed the findings using Johan Galtung’s violence triangle of direct, indirect, and cultural violence. This paper argues that more bottom-up, multi-disciplinary studies which take a peace-based rather than a crime-based approach are needed to find new ways out to the country’s chronic violence problem.
Uploads
Papers by Sofia Martinez Fernandez
* Este informe fue fruto de un proceso colaborativo de un amplio equipo de expertos y editores de la ONG International Crisis Group. La investigación cuantitativa fue elaborada por la economista Maria Micaela Sviatschi.
* Although I was the main contributor to the report and the one responsible for the writing and the field research, the final piece was a collaborative effort of a wider team of Crisis Group of staff members and consultants. The quantitative research was undertaken by US-based Economist Maria Micaela Sviatschi.
In this Q&A originally published in Crisis Group’s website during the 2017 post-election crisis in Honduras, I explained what has sparked the protests and its potential effect on armed violence.
Veintiséis años después de los acuerdos de paz que pusieron fin al conflicto armado, El Salvador continúa siendo un país azotado por la violencia. Durante las últimas cuatro legislaturas, tanto la antigua guerrilla del FMLN como el partido conservador ARENA han lanzado diferentes planes de seguridad para acabar con el problema de las maras, los principales grupos armados en el país responsables de casi 16 000 asesinatos en los últimos cuatro años. Sin embargo, el efecto de los diferentes planes de seguridad ha sido limitado al no conseguir una reducción sostenible de los homicidios durante más de dos años seguidos. Entre los principales escollos encontrados por el Estado salvadoreño se encuentra la desigual financiación de las medidas de los diferentes planes de seguridad y la falta de un enfoque estructural sobre el problema de la violencia, así como factores estructurales y el creciente deterioro del tejido social. En este artículo se analizan los condicionantes de la situación de seguridad en El Salvador a la vez que se plantean posibles acciones para promover esfuerzos de pacificación integrales, multipartidarios y sostenibles en uno de los países más violentos del mundo.
*This commentary was illustrated by award-winning artist Molly Crabapple. I was the leading author of the text, but the final product was a collaborative effort from a wider group of Crisis Group analysts and editors.
* Este reporte fue fruto de un proceso colaborativo por parte de un amplio equipo de analistas y editores en Crisis Group en el cual yo fui la autora principal y la responsable de la investigación de campo en Nicaragua.
* Please note that, although I was the main contributor for this report, it was a collaborative effort from a wider group of Crisis Group analysts and editors.
Research Agenda on Return and Repeat Displacement’ organised by the Perry World House (University of Pennsylvania) made possible (in part) by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Here are some of our most relevant findings:
- There is a significant link between small arms and lethal violence in Central America. Between 2013 and 2018, 80% of all violent killings were committed with a firearm.
- Despite the link between the availability of firearms and murder rates, the regions' governments have generally treated arms control as a separate issue from broader security plans, which has exacerbated the chronic violence crisis in the region.
- Based on data analysis from
@SmallArmsSurvey (see page 5 of the report for methodology https://bit.ly/Arms-Central-America) ordinary citizens and private security companies own on average 73% of the total number of registered firearms in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
- Our interviewees in the field explained that illegal firearms are widely available, mainly because of high demand due to perceptions of insecurity, weak gun control mechanisms and failings in the disarmament process following the countries' civil wars in the 90s.
- It is ultimately criminal groups who benefit most from the availability of firearms in the communities. Thanks to their access to firearms, gangs are able to exercise tight territorial control and enforce extortion, which is the main source of income to buy even more arms.
- Although men are more vulnerable to armed violence than women, the latter often become collateral victims. Our report includes brave testimonies from women who told us that they did not feel safe either in the street or at home as a consequence of this violence.
- Perhaps the most striking testimonies from the research are from children as young as 10 years old, who considered guns to be the best form of self-defence. We asked many of them to make anonymous drawings of how life feels in the community (see images inside the report).
- As a consequence of gun availability, many Central Americans are considering fleeing home towards Mexico and the US, increasing the humanitarian emergency in the region.
*Please note this is not a report authored by myself, but a collaborative paper by many individuals from the International Crisis Group.
Drafts by Sofia Martinez Fernandez
* Este informe fue fruto de un proceso colaborativo de un amplio equipo de expertos y editores de la ONG International Crisis Group. La investigación cuantitativa fue elaborada por la economista Maria Micaela Sviatschi.
* Although I was the main contributor to the report and the one responsible for the writing and the field research, the final piece was a collaborative effort of a wider team of Crisis Group of staff members and consultants. The quantitative research was undertaken by US-based Economist Maria Micaela Sviatschi.
In this Q&A originally published in Crisis Group’s website during the 2017 post-election crisis in Honduras, I explained what has sparked the protests and its potential effect on armed violence.
Veintiséis años después de los acuerdos de paz que pusieron fin al conflicto armado, El Salvador continúa siendo un país azotado por la violencia. Durante las últimas cuatro legislaturas, tanto la antigua guerrilla del FMLN como el partido conservador ARENA han lanzado diferentes planes de seguridad para acabar con el problema de las maras, los principales grupos armados en el país responsables de casi 16 000 asesinatos en los últimos cuatro años. Sin embargo, el efecto de los diferentes planes de seguridad ha sido limitado al no conseguir una reducción sostenible de los homicidios durante más de dos años seguidos. Entre los principales escollos encontrados por el Estado salvadoreño se encuentra la desigual financiación de las medidas de los diferentes planes de seguridad y la falta de un enfoque estructural sobre el problema de la violencia, así como factores estructurales y el creciente deterioro del tejido social. En este artículo se analizan los condicionantes de la situación de seguridad en El Salvador a la vez que se plantean posibles acciones para promover esfuerzos de pacificación integrales, multipartidarios y sostenibles en uno de los países más violentos del mundo.
*This commentary was illustrated by award-winning artist Molly Crabapple. I was the leading author of the text, but the final product was a collaborative effort from a wider group of Crisis Group analysts and editors.
* Este reporte fue fruto de un proceso colaborativo por parte de un amplio equipo de analistas y editores en Crisis Group en el cual yo fui la autora principal y la responsable de la investigación de campo en Nicaragua.
* Please note that, although I was the main contributor for this report, it was a collaborative effort from a wider group of Crisis Group analysts and editors.
Research Agenda on Return and Repeat Displacement’ organised by the Perry World House (University of Pennsylvania) made possible (in part) by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Here are some of our most relevant findings:
- There is a significant link between small arms and lethal violence in Central America. Between 2013 and 2018, 80% of all violent killings were committed with a firearm.
- Despite the link between the availability of firearms and murder rates, the regions' governments have generally treated arms control as a separate issue from broader security plans, which has exacerbated the chronic violence crisis in the region.
- Based on data analysis from
@SmallArmsSurvey (see page 5 of the report for methodology https://bit.ly/Arms-Central-America) ordinary citizens and private security companies own on average 73% of the total number of registered firearms in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
- Our interviewees in the field explained that illegal firearms are widely available, mainly because of high demand due to perceptions of insecurity, weak gun control mechanisms and failings in the disarmament process following the countries' civil wars in the 90s.
- It is ultimately criminal groups who benefit most from the availability of firearms in the communities. Thanks to their access to firearms, gangs are able to exercise tight territorial control and enforce extortion, which is the main source of income to buy even more arms.
- Although men are more vulnerable to armed violence than women, the latter often become collateral victims. Our report includes brave testimonies from women who told us that they did not feel safe either in the street or at home as a consequence of this violence.
- Perhaps the most striking testimonies from the research are from children as young as 10 years old, who considered guns to be the best form of self-defence. We asked many of them to make anonymous drawings of how life feels in the community (see images inside the report).
- As a consequence of gun availability, many Central Americans are considering fleeing home towards Mexico and the US, increasing the humanitarian emergency in the region.
*Please note this is not a report authored by myself, but a collaborative paper by many individuals from the International Crisis Group.