Addressing Transnational Threats in Central America: Partnership and Shared Responsibility

This historic meeting comes 4 months after President Bush’s visit to the region when he met with Presidents Berger and Calderon to discuss the severity of the security situation in Central America and Mexico and the development of a regional strategy to combat transnational threats in the region.

Partnership and shared responsibility will be critical to the achievement of our common goals. This joint effort will involve undertaking hard judicial reforms that will give states the legal instruments necessary to combat transnational crime. It will require the allocation of adequate resources for enhanced law enforcement and preventative programs. Our endeavors will also involve finding new and innovative ways to collaborate and coordinate our individual and collective actions. We must share information better and faster. We have to leverage our individual and unique expertise, assets, and resources to more effectively defeat transnational threats and protect the safety and security of our citizens.

The primary security challenge in Central America is no longer focused on state-to-state or military-to-military security threats, but rather how we collectively address nontraditional, transnational threats. It is about organized crime, drug trafficking, arms trafficking, gangs and gang-violence, trafficking in persons, and terrorism. These threats span a host of cross-cutting social problems and require coordinated, cooperative, and multifaceted responses by all of us. Beyond narrow police and military responses, we must find ways to incorporate the whole range of states, national institutions, multilateral organizations, each playing an appropriate role, with full respect for democratic principles and human rights.

Without personal safety, fear of crime and violence trumps economic opportunity, exacerbates poverty, and fosters social exclusion. We know that when security concerns dominate local communities and even whole countries, foreign and local investors look elsewhere. Without real economic growth and opportunity, communities lack the jobs to offer young people an alternative to joining a gang and the appeal of drug-trafficking and crime often provides the only tangible substitute for a life of poverty.

The security concerns we see in Central America today challenge us to think creatively about the role our diplomacy, institutions, and regional relationships can play in overcoming these threats. With the launch of this dialogue today, we now have a platform for designing and implementing our shared strategies to fight transnational threats.

To address the transnational security challenges of today will require a multidimensional response. It requires a national commitment that addresses security, justice, and opportunity. This means governments and institutions will need to collaborate across ministries to apply the full elements of national power to these intractable international problems. The good news is that you in Central America have already begun this work. The SICA model, pioneered in your Democratic Security Framework Treaty, provides the groundwork for these joint and combined efforts on the part of foreign ministers, defense ministers, and interior ministers.

No single organization has the whole agenda. We must include organizations that address the social and economic aspects of insecurity. We need to bolster education, health, corrections, and criminal justice systems to prevent, and if unsuccessful, sanction crime. Our intelligence and police, with the support of the armed forces will be in the forefront, but they must be supported by finance and economic ministries, legislative committees, and auditors general. All are needed and all must be involved for the success of our efforts.

A shared and well-defined security agenda among the SICA member states and the United States recognizes that through cooperation and collaboration we are better able to protect our countries, protect our economies, protect our institutions, and protect our citizens. In other words, we are in this together.

I am of the opinion that the SICA member States have demonstrated the power and potential of democracy to accomplish these goals. I am also of the opinion that, as partners, we can establish the diplomatic and political space necessary to foster dialogue, cooperation, and collaboration to turn today’s challenges into catalysts for building a more secure and prosperous future for our countries.

My delegation is pleased to be here in Guatemala and to begin our dialogue on security.