Friends of Brad Will

Press Release – H.R.2410 Foreign Relations Authorization Act

Last month, Congressman Howard L. Berman (D-CA), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 2010 and 2011 (H.R. 2410), a wide-ranging legislation aimed at improving U.S. foreign policy efforts. Among many things, this bill seeks to modernize the Foreign Service and to provide the State Department with resources for operations abroad. Within these reforms are a number of requirements aimed at “enhancing” the Merida Initiative (aka Plan Mexico) and ensuring that the $1.6 billion allocated to Mexico and Central America are appropriately spent. These measures include the creation of a “Merida Coordinator” in charge of designing and tracking all Merida related efforts, the addition of the Caribbean to the overall Initiative, and the authorization of 5% of Mérida money to fund evaluation of the program’s performance. This evaluation would include the reporting of “accusations of serious human rights abuses committed by the armed forces and law enforcement agencies of recipient countries” and a description of Mérida-recipient governments’ efforts to investigate and prosecute these allegations.

While Friends of Brad Will are encouraged by such reforms of the Merida Initiative that aim to enhance it, we continue to demand the immediate end of the Merida Initiative as a whole and the implementation of a policy based on the improvement of the Mexican police and justice systems, anti-corruption programs, and drug rehabilitation and prevention on both sides of the border. Friends of Brad Will, many other organizations and the US government are well aware of the fact that stipulations such as these requiring the Mexican government to track and prosecute human rights violations are merely superficial and do not lead to actual change. When the final version of the Merida Initiative was enacted in June 2008 it contained a series of conditions based on Mexico’s human rights issues that stipulated that 15 percent of Merida funds would not be granted to Mexico until the Mexican government showed significant improvement in the accountability and transparency of federal police forces, and investigations of human rights charges.

“The stipulations that the US places on Mexico have proved to be worthless because there has been no follow through. A year after the Merida Initiative, the Mexican government has done nothing in the name of human rights, yet continues to receive funds from the US that will merely add to its ability to violate them,” said Angelina Garneva, Human Rights Associate Intern of Friends of Brad Will. “While the conditions set up by this Act are just more empty rhetoric for human rights, the money that it provides and the violence it supports are real and legitimate.”