Youth and Armed Violence

Located in the center of Port-au-Prince, the neighborhood of Bel-Air suffers from a lack of basic services – and water is one of those. According to a study conducted by Viva Rio in June of 2007, this basic staple is so rare that the price of water is seven times higher than in Europe. That's the origin of the project “Dlo Fanm Sante” (‘Water, Women and Health’).

Girls are playing an increasingly prominent role in gangs in the Federal District. Today, gangs have all female groups and sections and women are performing more clearly defined functions, no longer relegated to a secondary role. But gender stereotypes continue to characterize the social networks of youth.

Program trains youth in Guatemala to become multipliers of peace. Their mission is to promote the prevention of gun violence in their communities, schools and churches. Every year, approximately one hundred volunteers are recruited and trained.

Fabiana Cantero and Fernando Veneziale, from Argentina's Secretaría de Niñez y Adolescencia, interviewed  218 young offenders in a youth detention center in Buenos Aires. They wanted to know what connection there is between offending and drug use, and discussed the results of their study with Comunidad Segura in an exclusive interview.

Isabel Aguilar from Guatemala's Interpeace, an NGO devoted to violence prevention in Central America, denounces the branding of young gang members as responsible for all social violence. Aguilar believes they are more vulnerable and less dangerous than other actors, but lack the social policies that will put them on the path to peace, as she tells Comunidad Segura in an exclusive interview.

Prison was in the past seen as a solution for unruly, violent or criminal gangs. No longer, now the reality is prisons must shrink in size. Comunidad Segura spoke to University of Chicago's John Hagedorn about how new measures to reduce the size of prisons may affect a world where gang members and convicts intersect.

The desire to belong. To belong to a pandilla, a mara, a barra brava.
That is what drives Central American youths, as noted by filmmaker
Marco Nicoletti while recently shooting a documentary for the NGO Interpeace, that works with building lasting peace in various conflicted areas around the world.

More than money, what attracts young people to the drug trade is guns.
They see guns as a way to get girls and to come out of invisibility. 
These are the some of recent findings of the CESeC study, “Meninos do
Rio” that went directly to the shantytowns and poorer areas of Rio de
Janeiro and changed a few long-standing misconceptions.

The Missouri model of Juvenile Justice is credited with a great turn around on how to work with juvenile corrections. It is also considered less expensive and is noted for low rates of recidivism inspiring similar initiatives across the US. Comunidad Segura interviewed Mark Steward, the man who played a key role in that change over 20 years.

The article brings up the experience of a young Colombian who lives in a comuna (slum), reporting his experience with drugs, use of firearms and the power hierarchy in the armed groups.