Highlight 25/2024 – Improving Governance over Police Use of Force in Latin America: The Case of Honduras
Adriana Gamboa Figueroa, 11 July 2024
In recent years, a series of incidents that involved police institutions exerting what has been considered an excess of force against individuals and groups of people in different parts of the globe has led to a general loss of public trust and confidence in the police.
Excessive use of force has been present in the United States of America, with police brutality evident in the infamous George Floyd case and more recently, with allegations of excessive police response to student protests over the war in Gaza; the UK (between 2020 and 2023), with recent inquiries into police conduct; Hong Kong with the 2019 repression of protests; complaints about excessive use of force and abuse of power by the police in Malaysia (2018-2022), abuses by the police against people violating the COVID-19 curfew in the Philippines; record-high police killings in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2019; jailed opposition figures in Nicaragua in 2023; just to name a few examples. These controversial incidents have failed to comply with the principles of necessity and proportionality in the use of force.
Police as a law enforcement institution are essential to the functioning of societies. Its purpose is to prevent crime and improve citizen security. To fulfill their duties of protection of people’s rights and public order, these agencies are endowed with power and authority, the latter in certain cases involving the use of force.
For the police to correctly exercise its power and authority and therefore provide public goods and services efficiently in each country, a system of good governance is required to balance the special faculties it has been entrusted with. This not only involves upholding a set of international standards and norms, but having mechanisms of internal and external checks and balances, namely, police accountability.
An erosion of trust in the police affects its legitimacy and effectiveness. In the Latin American region, confidence in the police is particularly low, with less than 50% of the population admitting to trust the institution. To improve and strengthen the governance of the police use of force, organisations in the Security Sector Governance and Reform (SSG/R) such as the Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF) suggest innovative approaches to modernise national police institutions that prioritise local actors’ design and production of context-specific models and manuals on the use of force. This has been the case of Honduras, were DCAF has been providing guidance and advise to support the Honduran National Police’s modernisation since 2020.
The new model for the use of force was co-designed by DCAF and the Honduran Police and it involved, on one side, an analysis of national laws and procedures, producing a legal and normative framework based on international and national systems. Additionally, guidance documents were produced by both actors to specifically target the use of force and firearms by the police in the form of a manual. Furthermore, to support the progress, an institutionalisation plan was developed in which all levels of the police received training.
Given that police accountability is fundamental to ensure there are clear and strong limits on police power and that they are held responsible for their actions in cases of breaches of the law and human rights, the institutionalisation plan for Honduras also incorporates inspection regimes and internal and external oversight from control agencies.
The purpose of this holistic approach on the use of force in Honduras is to improve governance processes in the police institution, increase police oversight, as well as strengthen police integrity and public trust, all of which would result in police efficiency, accountability and reinforced legitimacy.
If this tailored programme has been deployed in Honduras taking into account the context of the country and its unique characteristics such as legal framework, culture, economic and political situation, it should be deemed appropriate to replicate the efforts in other parts of Latin America where the police institutions are equally needed to modernise to better serve their societies.
Adriana Gamboa Figueroa, Highlight 25/2024 – Improving Governance over Police Use of Force in Latin America: The Case of Honduras, 11 July 2024, available at www.meig.ch
The views expressed in the MEIG Highlights are personal to the authors and neither reflect the positions of the MEIG Programme nor those of the University of Geneva.