Publicada en marzo del 2000

In January 1998, the IIHR started the two-year project "Citizen Security in Central America," sponsored by the Government of the Republic of China-Taiwan, in which Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua agreed to participate. Its general objective was to encourage actions intended to provide sustainable solutions to the problems of crime and insecurity in these countries, through a pilot experience in a previously determined area using the problem-solving approach. Its most important specific objectives were: a) to reduce both, the most serious forms of criminal behaviour, and the citizens' feelings of insecurity; b) to improve the image of the police and the criminal justice system; c) to encourage and promote the active participation of civil society in the search for solutions to the problems of crime and citizen insecurity; and d) to contribute to inter-institutional co-ordination on the subject of citizen security.