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The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, defended his security policy before the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which had attached a document with recommendations regarding juvenile justice in the country.
We are not going back to the past, Bukele said on X this March 31, and he recalled that similar international organizations had already influenced Salvadoran politics with consequences he described as disastrous.
"Do you remember April 27, 1994? Perhaps you do not, but we do," wrote the leader, referring to the approval of the Juvenile Offender Law, which was promoted based on international recommendations just after a civil war that left 85,000 dead.
According to Bukele, that law established minimum sentences for individuals under 18, which led to impunity. Three years later, the administration of Bill Clinton deported Salvadorans who had formed gangs in the United States, who, upon their arrival, found legislation that practically shielded them if they recruited teenagers.
"The newly arrived gang members began recruiting almost exclusively minors, all capable of committing atrocious crimes with the only risk of MAYBE facing a MINIMAL SENTENCE in a light detention center," the president noted.
The result, according to Bukele, was that these gangs "became the deadliest criminal groups in the world," kept "80% of the country" "under their control," constituted "a parallel government" and left "a quarter of a million dead and missing, in addition to 2 million displaced," turning El Salvador into "the murder capital of the world."
The leader concluded his message with an explicit rejection of the UN's recommendations: "Take your social experiments to other countries that have not suffered what we have suffered; maybe they will believe you (hopefully they won't)."
The exchange takes place amid sustained international pressure on Bukele's government regarding its security policies, particularly the state of emergency in effect since March 27, 2022 and extended monthly more than forty times, under which more than 81,000 arrests have been made, including more than 3,200 minors.
In February 2025, the Legislative Assembly approved reforms that mandate the transfer of juvenile offenders to adult prisons, a measure that the UN, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International described as a serious setback.
Bukele, however, defends the outcomes of his policy: the homicide rate fell from over 100 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015 to 1.9 in 2025, and the country has recorded more than 900 consecutive days without registered homicides.
In his speech before the UN General Assembly in September 2024, the president had already anticipated his stance: "we have jailed thousands, but the reality is that we have freed millions."
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