The UN, gangs, and the law in El Salvador

Abstract

This article examines the convergence between recent United Nations General Assembly resolutions on terrorism and human rights and the Salvadoran legal framework designed to address gang-related violence in normatively defined circumstances. Its central claim is that the Salvadoran legal problem cannot be properly understood if analysis begins only at the coercive phase of the State. Before arrest, indictment, and trial, there was a prolonged failure to protect communities exposed to structures that systematically affected life, bodily integrity, property, residence, mobility, education, and economic activity. Using a doctrinal legal methodology, a systematic reading of primary international and domestic sources, and selected academic scholarship, the article reconstructs the line that connects General Assembly resolutions A/RES/76/169, A/RES/78/210, and A/RES/80/213 —with explicit contextual support from A/RES/79/122— to the Special Law Against Acts of Terrorism, Constitutional Chamber judgment 22-2007 AC, Legislative Decree No. 551, Legislative Decree No. 803, and the state of exception declared by Legislative Decree No. 333. It concludes that reinforced protection of the population and due process are not incompatible categories: the former is legally sustainable only when exercised within strict legality, judicial control, personal attribution of criminal responsibility, effective defense, adversarial procedure, and individualized judicial reasoning.