Okay, that's what I will do then. You must be interested primarily in what's going on with regard to responding to the problems in the country.
Just as I reported last time, we have been involved in the country for a number of years. We've been involved primarily around trying to deal with the issues of creating a functional justice system. We do that work with Canadian dollars, money from DFATD, and we've been doing that work primarily in the northern triangle of Central America since 2000. What that means is the window we have on what's going on is not just informed by Honduras, but it's also informed by our work in Guatemala and El Salvador.
They call the region the northern triangle. As you know, the kinds of issues that Honduras is confronting are very much being confronted by the other countries of the northern triangle. Obviously we're dealing with the major issues that you've been aware of around the explosive growth of the gangs and the issues around dealing with the gangs, the transnational crime, the results of what's happened in the changes in Mexico that have pushed Los Zetas into Guatemala and affected very much the way the drugs go through. All of that has had a major impact on these countries, which have been historically very weak countries.
The other issue, from a context background, is this has been happening at a time when these countries are making major changes in their justice systems. Most of these countries started reforming their justice systems in the late 1990s into the early 2000s. You can imagine the challenges when you are throwing out a justice system that's 500 years old and you are implementing a hybrid system.
The system they are implementing is very much a hybrid system. They are moving from what they call the inquisitorial model to the adversarial model, or as they call it, the accusatorial model. Within that particular framework, there is a real issue not just around technical competence but also around culture and history. We're trying to deal with all of those issues.
This all came as a result of the violence in the region, and also what's going on in all of Latin America where all of the countries that were involved in the inquisitorial system are actually moving forward. Mexico is doing it, and it's being done all through South America. It's being done all through Central America. Each country has to deal with it within the context of different factors. The factors in Honduras really are factors that have been quite unprecedented in terms of the growth of violence. You have a weak state dealing with an incredible increase in violence trying to move from a system that was discredited for the fact that it was closed and paper-based to one that is a more open process, that is open trial based but which requires the collection of evidence in a way that has never been done before. That's the context we're working in.
Then there's the issue of how to do that. My view of Honduras is very much the view I had of the situation in Guatemala. In some ways it's actually worse, but I think they're at a stage of development that we saw 10 years ago in Guatemala. They are really weak, early in the issue of transformation. From our point of view, everybody talks about the different factors that affect the delivery of justice in a country like Guatemala, the whole issue of corruption, the whole issue of intimidation. If you're dealing with a major case or even violence around narcos, the whole issue of corruption is very real, because there can be attempts to bribe, or there are attempts to intimidate, which means if you don't accept bribery. then they're going to actually threaten you.
The third element, which is of course the element we're closest to, has to do with the actual weakness of the institutions in those countries. You're dealing with the whole question of mindset when you talk about human rights. Historically the police were under the military and then they were separated off. All of that is part of the cultural background. That is tied to an inquisitorial system that was, at the end of the day, quite discredited for the fact that it was not seen as being fair. What we have been doing is the work around how to build those pieces.
The last time I presented to you I was trying to give you an overview of how we're doing that. This time what I'll do is talk about what we see as some of the major new developments that are happening that give us some hope. Not to overstate it, because these are very major challenges, but there are things that are happening that, from my point of view, represent some positive movement forward.
We've worked primarily in Tegucigalpa. We've worked in San Pedro Sula. We've worked in La Ceiba. We've been slowly rolling out our work around the country. Our work has been with the police, the prosecutors, and the judiciary. We've been trying to deal with the various stages of how you actually deal with evidence, primarily focusing on murders, and then how you deal with the collection of that evidence, the protection of the evidence, the organization of the evidence, and the presentation of the evidence, all the way through that process. That involves a series of different types of courses, which generally we do together. We have police and prosecutors together, and we have prosecutors and judges together.
Then we do what we call special methods, in addition, which is where we're helping them create the specialized forms of evidence such as video evidence collection and analysis, criminal intelligence analysis, ballistics evidence collection and analysis, those kinds of pieces. They're only good if the basis is working well, because you're trying to add the evidence onto a system that is dysfunctional, so we're trying to deal with the core functionality.
In a country like Honduras, where people are quite intimidated and afraid to testify, physical evidence has become very important. This is the same situation as Guatemala. The results in Guatemala are encouraging. When we started the work, the resolution rate for murder was 2%; it is now up to 30%.
You're dealing with countries that have a lot of murders, among the three northern triangle countries, about 50 murders a day. Relatively speaking, Honduras is the worst proportionately in terms of population. As you know, it's the worst in the world in a non-combat zone.
There have been a number of developments. We look at our work. We're using Canadian dollars. We don't want to throw our time away or throw Canadian dollars away. We have to ask if we are making progress. We have ways to analyze that. Within that, part of it is the question of whether we're seeing in them certain commitments and changes that are needed if they're going to create functionality.
I don't know if you know, but just recently two prosecutors were killed in San Pedro Sula. They were people we had worked with. The issue for them is the reaction of the government, at least in terms of trying.... When prosecutors get killed, in this case it's already a situation where a lot of people within the justice system who do this work are fearful, and so the question is what the system does to protect its own, in order to say it has to move forward in a way that will allow its people to be safe.
One recent thing you probably know is that a new law passed on October 23 in Honduras. Basically, it's really a reaction law that will deal with the fact that if you now kill a justice system person—a prosecutor, police officer, or judge—it is mandatory life imprisonment. That doesn't address the issue of protecting people, but that does address the consequences. That is an example of how the state has started to.... From our point of view, that doesn't address the problem, but certainly it does send a signal in the system that the state is serious. For us, in talking to some of the prosecutors, we see they've taken that as a positive sign.
The more recent issue is what the state has been doing. You deal with a state that does not have a lot of resources. You deal with a state that's in a very violent situation. How does it protect its workers? One thing it has been doing, which we might find not enough but it is at least a positive movement, is doing training courses on human rights and self-defence. Part of the whole issue is that it's saying to the prosecutors and others that if they're finding themselves in dangerous situations, how do they respond. It's doing courses and training throughout the system to try to learn what mechanisms it can use in order to move to make sure people are going to be safe.
Part of that, connected to that, is they've actually been reorganizing, at least within the Ministerio Público. That's the place I know the best, the prosecutors. There are security support teams. They've actually created a rapid response team so that if there is a threat against a prosecutor, the prosecutor can call a certain number and there will be resources of security deployed.
The problem in a country like Honduras is you don't have a lot of money, you don't have a lot of resources, but you have a lot of issues. So that by itself I think is a major step forward but it certainly isn't going to make everybody feel safe and secure.
The important thing is these are new things. These are things that have been happening this yea. They represent a signal, at least for the workers within the system, that more steps are being done to try to deal with helping them to do their jobs, because if the workers are afraid, then of course that becomes a real problem. People are already overwhelmed with the caseloads. There are serious problems with how the system functions, and on top of that, if there's this fear, we've got a serious problem.
At least we've seen that, and we've seen that as well...because it happened in Guatemala where a prosecutor was very violently killed and the result of the system was to take steps, which I think really reassured the members. From my point of view it is heartening to see that some steps like this are happening in Honduras.
From my point of view, in terms of the situation of functionality, there are some signs of positive moving forward. You probably know about the tasa de seguridad, which was the fund created to try to deal with security as justice sector reform in order to improve it. My understanding is that this year there was something like $96 million in that fund and that fund is being accessed by the ministry of security, the ministry of defence, the supreme court, the prosecutors, and there's a prevention program as well. That started in about 2012, and this year of course the expectation is that it will be up to close to $100 million.
The partners we work with, the Ministerio Público, have accessed that money. We've been working with them. One of the fundamental problems, when you look at all the reports, is people ask about whether it's a question of lack of will or a question of interference in political control and manipulation, or whether it's a functionality issue. Obviously, depending on what you're dealing with, it's probably a combination of any of them, but for most matters, I would argue it's an issue of functionality because the system is so weak in its ability to investigate. The problem is you can get all these cases and then they want to proceed, but if they don't get the evidence, then how do they proceed?
We found there's a problem in the number of people, because there are too many cases. How do you deal with that? You have to prioritize. If every prosecutor is sitting on 50 murders at one time, how do they deal with that, especially in a system where the prosecutor is required by law to direct the investigation? There are real issues around that. We've been dealing with some of those issues because prosecutors in those legal systems are trained in the law but they're not trained in how to investigate. Yet that system has been created because of a lack of respect or ability to have confidence in the police.
So they created a hybrid, but in the course of a hybrid, the fundamental workers at the centre of the piece, the prosecutors, have not had the tools to do the work properly. Part of that is what we're trying to address. But one of the things that has happened, which is giving me some hope, is that on January 5, 2015, they will be launching what they call the ATIC. The ATIC is the Agencia Técnica de Investigación Criminal. That's the criminal investigation unit of the Ministerio Público.
What has been happening in these countries has been a real problem of investigation in terms of dysfunction at the police level. In Honduras the police are quite dysfunctional, as is their ability to work hand-in-glove with the prosecutors on investigations. If the prosecutors don't have proper investigators, they can go nowhere. That issue is front and centre in many countries. That is happening all over Latin America.
Now they're responding in different ways. In some countries they're creating strong investigative units within the police. In other countries they're pulling them out of the police and putting them in the prosecutors' offices. In other countries they're creating a judicial police that is separate from both institutions. In Guatemala, they're moving to the third way.
What is happening in Honduras, which represents something that we dealt with about 10 years ago in Guatemala, is they're creating an integrated investigative police force within the prosecution service. It's going to be launched on the 5th of January. They're going to have a hundred investigators. We've been working with them on training. We hope to continue to work with them, subject obviously to funding. They'll have 180 staff. They'll primarily be working in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. They've accessed money from the security fund. This year they'll get basically about $8 million, but it will be enough to create that unit.
From our point of view, we have to see that unit start to function. That unit will not be able to deal with all cases, but it will be able to take the more high-impact cases. It will be able to take, I'm hoping, some of what we call the serious crime cases. If it can do that, and if it can do that well, then it will become the model for the whole country.
Now, that has been part of an issue; the two people at the head of that unit we work with very closely, and we recently took them to Guatemala to look at what had been done in Guatemala around creation of what we call a much more integrated investigative unit, which involves the prosecutors and the police unified. For me, that is the critical challenge systemically within the country of Honduras.
That is some positive stuff in terms of moving forward. There have been questions raised around certain cases and obviously how they're trying to respond to certain things. At least within the Ministerio Público, which is charged with investigation around some of the human rights violations, they have taken certain steps this year that I think are positive. For example, they assigned four prosecutors to work directly with the Colegio de Abogados, the college of lawyers, to deal with investigations around attacks on lawyers. That was a positive development.
I know there were the killings of the people in the north, where we were dealing with the land issues. A lot of those cases have basically sat since 2011. I understand that in the spring of this year two new prosecutors were assigned to actually deal with that.
Those are some positive indications of movement forward. There are some other concerns. Hopefully the use of the military police in the streets is temporary. As you know, originally the military was called out in 2011 to help around security because of the weakness of the police. In 2013 they then created a special military police of public order. Our concern is that, in those discussions, they really not become the replacement for the police. Part of the discussions with the partners has been that those police primarily are rapid response forces. They're going in en masse. They're going into communities where there's conflict. There have been cases of allegations of violence by them, of human rights breaches by them.
The concern, of course, is that the military police not take on the investigative function, because part of the law in 2013 did have them working with the prosecutors and the judiciary. The concern going forward is that if the police cannot be strengthened, they may stay a force on the street. You'll then have a police force and you'll have a military police force trying to cooperate together around dealing with crime on the streets. That for us is a concern.
We talked to people. We asked them: are they going to undertake the investigative functions or are they primarily going to be there for the rapid response functions? I got different answers. Most recently, I have answers that say they're hoping that the investigative function, especially with the creation of ATIC, will not go their way in the future. One of the concerns, of course, is around the weakness of the police. The police have been quite unstable. I understand that right now they're about to go through another purging exercise in Honduras. Those things are very difficult. They tend to use the polygraph when they do that. There's some question about how effective that is, and at the same time, the results of it further destabilize an already weak police force. Of course, it affects in a dramatic way the morale of the police.
We've certainly experienced that within our work. We've trained somewhere in the neighbourhood of 80 técnicos to deal with crime scenes, and we've probably lost about a third of them in these processes. At the same time, we understand that they need to do this cleansing, that they have to strengthen it. Obviously it is a major challenge for them.
Maybe I'll just leave it at that as a way of an introduction and then throw it open to you for questions. Is that okay?
