To have effective public policies, the countries of the region must have the capacity to collect, process, analyze, and disseminate information, especially in the area of security. Over the last five years, the countries of the Americas have experienced increasingly complex threats and challenges to the safety of their citizens. In an effort to collaborate with its member states and keep governments from developing their security policies in an isolated or limited fashion, the Organization of American States (OAS) recently created the Inter-American Observatory on Citizen Security http://www.alertamerica.org/ which, among other things, seeks to increase the base of knowledge about trends in criminal activity and the operation of justice systems in the region.

Currently, much of the information on criminal activity and violence in OAS member states comes from partial data, developed individually by particular state institutions. The police, public prosecutors, prisons, and courts present their reports with some regularity, but they use indicators that make international comparisons difficult. In order to strengthen the effort to create standardized indicators for all countries, the OAS signed an agreement with the United Nations to be the coordinator of the UN Survey on Crime Trends for the Western Hemisphere. As a result of this agreement, the Inter-American Observatory on Security is already disseminating information collected by the governments of member states. Information from other organizations of the inter-American system—such as reports on drug consumption and trafficking, data on violence against women, data on corruption and cyber-crime, justice system reports, and human rights reports—is also being distributed. In addition, the Observatory is publishing the results of victimization surveys conducted by member state governments and additional data about the socio-economic development of each country and/or sub-region of the Western Hemisphere.

During the first Meeting of Ministers Responsible for Public Security, OAS member countries adopted the “Commitment to Public Security in the Americas,” which encourages member states “to consider developing comparable public security parameters in order to strengthen our cooperative efforts.” In the region, it is primarily police institutions that have the function of managing information on criminal activity. Because the information from intelligence services is considered “sensitive,” however, these indicators often have a restricted dissemination. In spite of civil society demands for free access to information, the scarce data that does exist on violence and criminality often continues to be the exclusive property of a few state representatives, and that makes public security policies hard to monitor. With the creation of the OAS Inter-American Observatory on Security, this information will become available to all state institutions and to all social sectors, providing countries with an instrument capable of measuring the effectiveness of their actions in the field of security. As a regional instrument, the Observatory is charged with providing this information in a practical and timely way to governments; national, regional, and international organizations; civil society; academia; and to the public in general.

The crafting of public policies also requires qualified personnel, adequate information, and decision-making capacity. Therefore, the Observatory seeks to stimulate the development of a culture of statistical information, by helping to strengthen the government institutions responsible for data production, avoid duplication, and coordinate activities aimed at collecting quantitative and qualitative data in the various countries and at the sub-regional level. Finally, the Observatory hopes to contribute to greater rationality in the debate on public security, by providing an inter-sectoral and interdisciplinary space that facilitates the development and monitoring of public policies aimed at improving conditions of security and peaceful coexistence for the population. In a very short period of time, the OAS Observatory on Security has been able to collect a large amount of official quantitative and qualitative data on criminality and violence, including information on legal norms, public policies, and lessons learned that are relevant for almost all OAS member states. This information is available on the Web and in a series of Observatory publications on public security matters.

This new initiative is an integral part of OAS efforts to support its member states as they confront a problem that is not only a threat to the security, health, physical integrity, and lives of millions of people in the Americas, undermining individual freedoms and basic rights, but also directly affects fundamental aspects of economic development and threatens the integrity of the state itself and of the democratic institutions of many countries of the world.

For more information, visit http://www.alertamerica.org/

Luiz Coimbra is the Coordinator of the Inter-American Observatory on Security of the OAS Secretariat for Multidimensional Security.