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The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights recently held a hearing, which was requested by the Centre for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) and the Network for Children and Young People (RIA), on how security policies in El Salvador are violating children’s rights. The organisations stressed that the implementation of the Mano Dura and Súper Mano Dura (Heavy Hand and Very Heavy Hand) policies have resulted in high numbers of young people being arbitrarily detained, violating their right to personal liberty and freedom of association. The State sustains that young people are responsible for most crime, a statement which has been rejected by the petitioners who presented contrary figures. According to statistics provided by 20 courts from 2000 06, of the more than 300,000 people who were detained, only 5.8 per cent were children. Another concern raised in the hearing was that the implementation of these security policies has been used by the army to carry out tasks outside its mandate, such as patrolling public spaces with the Civil Police. The mandate of the armed forces is national defence, not public security. The petitioners said that prisons are overpopulated by 100 per cent: there is a capacity for 7,372, but they currently hold 14,600 prisoners. The solutions that the Salvadoran State have tried to combat criminality have not been successful in addressing the phenomenon of gangs or “maras”, as they are known, but have instead exacerbated the crisis by implementing unconstitutional laws which do not respect judicial guarantees and violate the presumption of innocence and the right to a defence. The State says it has made progress on the issue. However, representatives could not prove this with indicators, or with statistics. Furthermore, the State representative, Oscar Bonilla, spoke out against the participation in the hearing of the judge Doris Rivas, a member of the Associative Forum for Democratic and Independent Judges. The petitioning organisations said that her statements went against the right to freedom of expression and the work of human rights organisations in El Salvador. CEJIL and RIA requested that the IACHR publish a report on the situation of children and young people in El Salvador, which came out of the visit of the Rapporteur on Children’s Rights, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro. He also asked the Commission to urge the Salvadoran State to suspend the implementation of repressive laws which violate human rights. Further information