At a forum in Honduras, former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe recommended the integration of government and municipal authorities with private business and civil society as a way to successfully fight crime.
At a forum in Honduras, former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe recommended the integration of government and municipal authorities with private business and civil society as a way to successfully fight crime.
Uribe made the proposal to authorities from Honduras’s 298 municipalities, during a forum on the “role of government agencies, municipal governments, and civil society in citizen security.”
According to the former president, “in order to achieve success in fighting organized crime, the participation of municipal and government authorities, private business, and civil society is needed, as true strategic allies in the fight against insecurity.”
Uribe was invited to speak about the topic in recognition of the results he obtained in the fight against crime and drug trafficking during his time in office as president of Colombia, from 2002 to 2010.
He affirmed that his administration reduced poverty by 25 percent, kidnappings fell from 4,000 to zero, and he recovered 200 municipalities in the power of organized crime.
Honduran authorities are concerned by rising violence and crime, which seem to be growing by leaps and bounds every day, even in the country’s most remote areas, while the police and the judicial system are powerless.
“Citizen security should be, above all, a challenge for society in general. People should be aware of the problem, so that they can make their own contributions. It’s a matter of making firm decisions and, instead of investing in bureaucracy, having more police and more technology to fight crime,” he said.
In the fight against crime, he added, “no one can do miracles, but if we’re on top of the problem, we can resolve it little by little,” although “the state should be frugal and avoid bureaucratic solutions, because they deceive the people.”