IAF’s Approach to Chronic Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean

Latin America and the Caribbean is the most violent region in the world by many measures. It hosts less than one in ten of the world's people, but one in three of the world's murders. With a homicide rate of 24.7 per 100,000 residents and housing 42 of the world's 50 most violent cities in the world, Latin America is the world's most violent region outside active war zones.

Violence forms the backdrop for much of the work we fund. The grassroots organizations we fund are doing what they set out to do-raise farmers' incomes, protect local environments, or help young people acquire job skills-while people in their neighborhoods and families are being threatened, kidnapped, recruited into gangs, or killed. More than 70% of grantees reported having been impacted by violence, from robberies to threats to more serious issues, in an internal IAF survey in 2020.

But what is chronic violence? Following the definition in the academic literature, we define chronic violence as occurring in places where rates of violent death have been twice the average for similar countries for at least five years, and where high levels of non-deadly violence occur across multiple spaces, such as households, neighborhoods, and schools. This presence of violence across the spaces where people socialize, learn, and do business contributes to reproducing violence over time.

Put simply, chronic violence occurs in environments where violence is "normalized." The impacts are widespread. Chronic violence undermines economic development and creates footholds for criminal groups. It makes it harder for people to get educated and stay healthy. It also weakens support for democracy and engagement in civic life, erodes people's trust in institutions and each other, and drives many to migrate. Living with chronic violence from an early age traumatizes people and warps their perceptions of what is normal and good, often making them a part of keeping the cycle of violence going. However, most policies and programming that aim to end such widespread violence target only one manifestation of violence (such as narcotrafficking, organized criminal activity, or domestic abuse), instead of understanding and adapting to chronic violence as a complex, interconnected ecosystem.

Leading on Chronic Violence

The IAF is one of the only development organizations directly tackling the complex issue of chronic violence. We invest in brave leaders from marginalized populations working at the grassroots, person-to-person level where they can promote transformative change to break intergenerational cycles. We currently provide tailored support to around 100 community organizations directly responding to unique contexts of chronic violence.

Starting in 2013, we took a more deliberate approach to understanding how a context of chronic violence affects grantees' economic, social, and civic life, working with the late Guatemalan-American Anthropologist and Wilson Center Scholar Tani Adams.

Since then, we have been building communities of practice and learning areas. First, in Colombia following the peace agreements in 2016, we developed a portfolio of grants aimed at building a peaceful society. Our resulting community of practice now comprises more than 30 current and former IAF grantees who exchange diverse best practices and open opportunities for creating peacebuilding alliances. Starting in 2017, we began focusing more intentionally on addressing chronic violence and insecurity in the Northern Triangle of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras), as one of the factors driving people to migrate irregularly out of the region.

Over the course of the past year, the IAF has been supporting a cohort of 10 grantees in Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Colombia. We've brought groups of grantees together to develop a shared language to discuss their work in terms of chronic violence, hosting short meetings in El Salvador in October 2023 and Mexico in January 2024, followed by a gathering of the full cohort in El Salvador in May 2024. These gatherings have produced tangible results (read more about those results in this article). The vast majority of participating grantees have reported greater understanding of terms and theories related to chronic violence. Also, many participating grantees have taken steps to, in some cases, dramatically alter their programming in order to address not just the symptoms of chronic violence, but importantly the driversof chronic violence as well.

Chronic violence poses a real threat to the lives and success of our grantees and the communities they serve. Also, chronic violence in these communities can have real repercussions for Americans at home and abroad. Because of this, understanding this dangerous phenomenon, and helping our grantees take an informed, holistic approach to addressing it, is essential to ours and our grantees' long-term success.