A group of international jurists has accused the government of El Salvador of committing “crimes against humanity” during the state offensive against gangs. The accusation appears in a report submitted to international human rights bodies and argues that, under the state of emergency in force since 2022, the Salvadoran state has implemented a systematic policy of serious violations against the civilian population.
The document arrives at a time when President Nayib Bukele’s security strategy continues to enjoy broad support within the country, thanks to the drastic reduction in gang-related violence.
However, human rights organizations and legal experts warn that this success in the fight against crime has come at the cost of weakening the rule of law and establishing a pattern of abuses that could constitute crimes prosecutable under international justice.
International lawyers accuse Bukele Government of ‘crimes against humanity’
The report was prepared by an independent group of jurists and human rights experts and presented before international bodies such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). Its authors argue that Salvadoran authorities have committed serious and systematic violations that could fall within the legal category of crimes against humanity.
The document is based on an extensive compilation of information, with nearly 1,700 sources including testimonies, reports from civil society organizations, judicial files, and official records. According to the experts, the investigation documents killings, torture, enforced disappearances, sexual violence, and arbitrary detentions carried out during the implementation of the state of emergency decreed by the government to combat gangs.
The jurists argue that these violations are not isolated incidents but part of a state policy that has consolidated over the years. In that sense, the report states that the suspension of constitutional guarantees, initially conceived as a temporary measure, has become a permanent mechanism of control that allows authorities to detain thousands of people without the basic guarantees of due process.
The report also calls for the establishment of international investigative mechanisms and for the review of the cases of thousands of detainees to determine the responsibility of both the direct perpetrators and those who may have designed or allowed these policies.
“These are not isolated cases, but rather a policy in which crimes are committed on a large scale and in a systematic manner,” said José Guevara, a specialist in humanitarian law and member of the group that drafted the document.
The state of emergency and mass detentions
The origin of the controversy lies in the state of emergency decreed by the Salvadoran government in March 2022, following a spike in murders attributed to gangs. The measure suspended several constitutional rights and granted security forces broad powers to carry out arrests without a judicial warrant.
Since then, around 90,000 people have been detained as part of the so-called “war on gangs,” which is equivalent to about 1.4 percent of the country’s population. Many of these individuals remain in pretrial detention under precarious conditions and with slow or nonexistent judicial processes, according to the report.
Experts note that among those detained are thousands of minors and people arrested without clear evidence of links to criminal organizations. In addition, the document records hundreds of deaths in state custody and numerous cases of enforced disappearance reported by relatives and civil society organizations.
Salvadoran authorities have repeatedly rejected these accusations and argue that the measures are necessary to confront criminal organizations that for years controlled large areas of the country.
The popularity of the ‘Bukele model’
Despite international criticism, President Bukele’s security policy enjoys broad social support within El Salvador. For decades, the country was considered one of the most violent in the world, with extremely high homicide rates linked to gangs such as MS-13 and Barrio 18.
The state offensive against these organizations has drastically reduced levels of violence and transformed daily life in many communities that for years were under criminal control. That perception of restored security has consolidated the president’s popularity and has turned his strategy into a model that some political leaders in the region observe with interest.
Bukele himself has defended his policy as a necessary war against criminal structures that, according to his government, had captured the state for decades. On repeated occasions he has stated that the criticism comes from international organizations that do not understand the scale of the gang problem in El Salvador.
In addition, this model has been copied and adopted as part of the narrative of right-wing governments across Latin America, for whom the Salvadoran president is seen as a model to follow on security matters. In this sense, the speeches of most conservative presidents and politicians of that ideology who aspire to come to power in their countries advocate importing a hard-line policy against crime.
Critics outside El Salvador
At the same time, and alongside these praises, human rights organizations have for years warned that the security strategy has also been accompanied by a growing concentration of power in the executive branch and a weakening of institutional checks and balances, including an evident violation of the Constitution through which Bukele secured reelection, despite the fact that reelection is prohibited by that country’s constitution.
It should be recalled that in that controversial 2024 process, electoral support for the Salvadoran president exceeded 84 percent of the vote. As a result, his reelection—despite legal doubts and accusations of manipulation of the judiciary to make it dependent on the executive—ended up being socially supported, at least domestically.
In this regard, international reports have pointed, for example, to the dismissal of judges and prosecutors critical of the government and to legal reforms that have expanded political control over the judicial system, a practice that has been repeated over the past five years.
The new report by international jurists fits into this broader debate about the limits of the fight against crime and respect for fundamental rights. Its authors argue that, even in contexts of extreme violence, the state must act within the framework of international law and guarantee due process.
For the experts, the Salvadoran case raises a question that goes beyond the Central American country: whether it is possible to effectively combat organized crime without sacrificing democratic guarantees. Meanwhile, Bukele’s government continues to defend its security model, backed by domestic popularity that contrasts with the growing criticism from abroad.