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El Salvador Swept Under the Rug Abuses against Domestic Workers Around the World
HRW Index No.: C1807 July 26, 2006 Download PDF, 470 KB, 95 pgs Purchase online Download E-Book Turning a Blind Eye Hazardous Child Labor in El Salvador’s Sugarcane Cultivation Businesses purchasing sugar from El Salvador, including The Coca-Cola Company, are using the product of child labor that is both hazardous and widespread. Harvesting cane requires children to use machetes and other sharp knives to cut sugarcane and strip the leaves off the stalks, work they perform for up to nine hours each day in the hot sun. Nearly every child interviewed by Human Rights Watch for its 139-page report said that he or she had suffered machete gashes on the hands or legs while cutting cane. These risks led one former labor inspector to characterize sugarcane as the most dangerous of all forms of agricultural work. HRW Index No.: B1602 June 10, 2004 Also available in 
Download PDF, 500 KB, 73 pgs Purchase online No Rest Abuses Against Child Domestics in El Salvador Tens of thousands of girls in El Salvador work as domestics, a form of labor that makes them particularly vulnerable to physical abuse and sexual harassment. This 35-page report calls on the Salvadoran government to include domestic workers, who are almost exclusively girls and young women, in its program to address hazardous child labor. Girls as young as nine work as domestics in El Salvador and may labor 12 hours or more, up to six days a week, for wages of $40 to $100 a month. They are particularly vulnerable to physical abuse and sexual harassment from members of the household in which they work. HRW Index No.: B1601 January 15, 2004 Also available in 
Download PDF, 558 KB, 38 pgs Purchase online Deliberate Indifference El Salvador's Failure to Protect Workers' Rights This 110-page report documents serious violations of workers' human rights and examines the role of the government. It features case studies in the private and public sectors, in manufacturing and service industries, and concludes that workers face an uphill battle to exercise their rights, regardless of the sector. Three of the highlighted companies supplied internationally known, U.S.-based apparel corporations. Human Rights Watch found that employers delay salary payments, fail to pay overtime due, deny mandatory bonuses and vacation payments, and pocket workers' social security contributions, preventing them from receiving free public health care. Most pervasively, employers use myriad tactics to violate workers' right to freedom of association. The report calls on El Salvador to strengthen its labor laws by requiring reinstatement for workers illegally fired or suspended for legitimate trade union activity, banning anti-union hiring discrimination, and streamlining union registration requirements according to ILO recommendations. Human Rights Watch urges the Ministry of Labor to uphold workers' human rights by following legally mandated inspection procedures, facilitating rather than obstructing union registration, and refraining from participating with employers in illegal anti-union conduct. HRW Index No.: B1505 December 4, 2003 Also available in
Download PDF Purchase online El Salvador: Child Soldiers Global Report 2001 From the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers There are indications of under-18s in government armed forces since voluntary recruitment can take place from the age of sixteen. During the civil war, some 80 per cent of government and 20 per cent of opposition forces were estimated to be children. June 12, 2001 El Salvador: Landmine Monitor Report 2000 El Salvador signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 4 December 1997 and ratified on 27 January 1999. Thus, the treaty entered into force for El Salvador on 1 July 1999. El Salvador has not yet passed any legislation implementing the ban treaty. It has also not yet submitted its Article 7 transparency report, due by 27 December 1999, even though Vice-Minister of External Relations Rene Eduardo Dominguez has said, "We consider it necessary that transparency exist with respect to complete communication with the United Nations as Depository of the Convention, with the intent of advancing Article 7 reporting." August 1, 2000 Children in Combat Throughout the world, thousands of children are used as soldiers in armed conflicts.1 Although international law forbids recruiting children under fifteen as soldiers, such young children may be found in government armies and, more commonly, in armed rebel groups. Armed forces, both governmental and non-governmental, often claim that the children in their camps are there for their own protection and welfare. In fact, however, the involvement of the children in the conflict puts them in grave danger and is detrimental to their physical and mental health and development. This report concerns the ways in which children are recruited, the possible reasons for their recruitment and participation, the roles children play in combat and in violence against civilians, and their treatment by the groups that recruit them. It does not deal with all of the countries in which child soldiers are used, but only with countries in which Human Rights Watch has investigated the practice. Legal standards for the prevention of the recruitment of children and problems in applying and enforcing them are covered as well. January 1, 1996 Download PDF, 219 KB, 26 pgs Printer friendly version Darkening Horizons: Human Rights on the Eve of the March 1994 Elections No issue represented a greater threat to the peace process and the elections than the rise in political murders of leaders and grassroots activists belonging to the FMLN. This report calls on the Salvadoran government to take a number of steps to prevent past abusers of human rights from taking positions in the new armed forces or government agencies. March 1, 1994 El Salvador Darkening Horizons: Human Rights on the Eve of the March 1994 Elections As El Salvador winds up the campaign for presidential, legislative, and municipal elections scheduled for March 20, 1994, no issue represents a greater threat to the peace process than the rise in political murders of leaders and grassroots activists belonging to the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). These assassinations, which became more frequent, brazen, and selective in the fall of 1993, have continued into the new year. They have raised fears that notorious death squads which sowed terror in the 1980s have been reactivated if, in fact, they were ever disbanded. Several of these squads have publicly claimed credit for death threats, which have then been followed by abductions, attacks, or murders. March 1, 1994 Download PDF, 216 KB, 21 pgs Printer friendly version Accountability and Human Rights The Report of the United Nations Commission on the Truth for El Salvador The Salvadoran peace process, fostered and shepherded by the United Nations, has been unique in the central place afforded human rights. A comprehensive human rights accord signed in July 1990 was a stepping-stone on the path to a broader agreement, and set the stage for United Nations verification of the peace process. The final peace accord itself signed in early 1992 included many provisions with a direct bearing on human rights. The agreement made provision for an Ad Hoc Commission to purge the armed forces of abusive and corrupt officers and established a Commission on the Truth to investigate past abuses. The accord abolished two repressive security forces, mandated the creation of a new National Civilian Police, and contained suggestions to reform and de-politicize the judicial system. While many aspects of implementation of the peace accord remain in question, the accord itself is a stunning document, addressing many of the root causes of the conflict and establishing concrete mechanisms for change. August 10, 1993 Download PDF, 350 KB, 39 pgs Printer friendly version Accountability and Human Rights: The Report of the United Nations Commission on the Truth for El Salvador El Salvador's Truth Commission represents the first time since the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials following World War II that foreign, rather than national figures, investigated past episodes of violence in a sovereign country. The report they issued in March 1993 confirmed what human rights organizations in and outside El Salvador had reported for a decade: that the Salvadoran armed forces and death squads bore principal responsibility for the murder, disappearance and torture of Salvadoran civilians. Our document briefly outlines the origins of the Truth Commission, the contents of its report, the local and international reactions and how the U.N. efforts in El Salvador should serve as a model for present and future peace-making efforts elsewhere. August 1, 1993 Peace and Human Rights Successes and Shortcomings of the United Nations Observer Mission in El Salvador (Onusal) After twelve long, exhausting years, the war in El Salvador has come to an end. The January 16, 1992 peace accord signed by the Salvadoran government and the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) in Chapultepec, Mexico, lays out sweeping institutional reforms designed to enable the FMLN to demobilize its forces and participate in the political life of El Salvador. Primary among those reforms are provisions for the dissolution of existing security forces and Army rapid-reaction battalions, and the establishment of a new civilian police force open to former FMLN combatants. Two commissions have been formed to overcome impunity for human rights violations, one to examine the records of military officers with an eye toward purging those who committed or tolerated human rights abuses; the second to look into human rights cases over the last decade and make recommendations as to further prosecutions. September 2, 1992 Download PDF, 266 KB, 28 pgs Printer friendly version The Massacre at El Mozote The Need To Remember With the negotiated cease-fire agreement signed on January 16, 1992, in Mexico City, the twelve-year-old conflict in El Salvador has formally come to an end. The agreements under United Nations supervision between the Salvadoran government and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) envision unprecedented reforms: to reduce the military, dissolve the elite, immediate-reaction battalions, eliminate two of the security forces, create a new National Civil Police, and demobilize the FMLN and fully integrate ex-guerrillas into civilian life. These transformations hold forth the greatest possibility yet for the respect for human rights and the achievement of social justice in El Salvador. In order to further the prospects for accountability, this report examines one of the most egregious massacres of the entire conflict: the cold-blooded murder of hundreds of civilians in northern Morazán by Salvadoran troops of the U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion in December 1981. The massacre at El Mozote, probably the largest mass killing reported during the war, was a formative experience for most of the thousands of peasants and many of the guerrillas in northern Morazán. It and similar Army operations in Morazán sent thousands of peasants fleeing across the border into exile in Honduras, and helped fuel the growth of the guerrilla movement. March 4, 1992 Download PDF, 234 KB, 20 pgs Printer friendly version The Jesuit Trial An Observer's Report The trial of nine Salvadoran army soldiers and officers accused in the November 1989 murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter took place in San Salvador on September 26-28, 1991, in front of a host of international observers including Americas Watch. The jury verdict, reached after a five-hour deliberation, was a stunning blow to justice and proved how little the Salvadoran judicial system actually works. Colonel Guillermo Alfredo Benavides Moreno, head of the Salvadoran Military School, was convicted of eight counts of murder and Lieutenant Yusshy René Mendoza Vallecillos, who oversaw the murder operation in the field, was convicted of the murder of one victim, the fifteen year old girl. Yet seven remaining defendants were acquitted, despite their own detailed confessions of participation in the murders. Those acquitted included two lieutenants and five enlisted men, one of whom deserted and was tried in absentia. All but three of these defendants had received military training from the United States, some on U.S. soil. December 13, 1991 Download PDF, 180 KB, 14 pgs Printer friendly version El Salvador’s Decade Of Terror: Human Rights Since the Assassination of Archbishop Romero The most comprehensive account now available on human rights violations in El Salvador, A Decade of Terror documents the civil war between an armed insurgency and the military-backed government, and explains how it has led to a decade of ferocious political violence that has cost thousands of civilian lives. HRW Index No.: ISBN 0-300-04939-0 October 1, 1991 El Salvador Extradition Sought For Alleged Death Squad Participant On August 16, 1991, a federal magistrate in San Antonio, Texas will rule on a request by the government of El Salvador to extradite César Vielman Joya Martínez, a former soldier in the intelligence unit of the First Infantry Brigade of the Salvadoran Army, for his alleged involvement in the murder of two young men in El Salvador in July 1989. Americas Watch opposes the extradition of Joya Martínez, because he is likely to be killed in El Salvador as a direct result of testimony he has given about death squad activities conducted in 1988-89 by the Salvadoran military. Americas Watch interviewed Joya Martínez for several hours and reviewed transcripts of many other hours of testimony given about his personal knowledge of, and participation in, First Brigade death squad activities. We read the court records in the murder case for which Joya Martínez's extradition is being sought, up until the time those court records were, without explanation, removed from public scrutiny. We attempted to verify Joya Martínez's accounts of First Brigade death squad activities by field investigations of murders he alleged were conducted by this squad. We were already familiar, because of our presence since 1985 in El Salvador, with certain of the cases he mentioned and with the Apopa-Nejapa area north of San Salvador, to which he was assigned. August 14, 1991 Download PDF, 127 KB, 6 pgs Printer friendly version El Salvador Impunity Prevails in Human Rights Cases Despite a decade of promises by government officials to bring to justice those responsible for gross violations of human rights in El Salvador, the impunity of military officers and death squads members remains intact. Although thousands of cases of political killings, torture, and disappearances of civilians at the hands of government forces have been documented, to date, no officer has been convicted of a politically motivated human rights abuse in El Salvador.1 Six officers have been charged in connection with two recent massacres (see below, Massacre at San Francisco and Slayings of Jesuits, Their Cook, and Her Daughter), but have yet to be tried. The following is a status report on nine human rights cases in which prosecutions are still pending. Despite their particular visibility and significance both internationally and within El Salvador, each case is a story of the denial of justice. The way in which each case has unraveled -- investigations never completed or never initiated, trials that never occur, the persecution of witnesses or judicial officials -- sheds light on the impunity of the armed forces and death squads which allows such gross abuses to continue. September 1, 1990 Download PDF, 164 KB, 16 pgs Printer friendly version
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