Confronting the Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century

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Countering the Corrosive Effects of Narcotics Trafficking and Organized Crime on Democratic Development: How Broader Civil Society Forces Can Help

• Establish a network to enable civil society organizations and government offices fighting narco-trafficking to exchange information on their work.
• Political parties in countries suffering the effects of narco-trafficking, especially those that produce drugs, should be strengthened to prevent the infiltration of the traffickers into decision-making and especially into the electoral process. Accounts of electoral expenditures should be made transparent, especially to identify the origins of contributions.
• Every country should have an office that investigates corruption undermining democracy, and particularly the electoral process. These offices should have databases of information to which journalists and nongovernmental organizations should have access. The experience of investigative journalism in Peru can serve as a model for this purpose.
• Civil society should assume a more deliberate role in the fight against narco-trafficking and its negative effects, bringing together different organizations that seek to mitigate the harmful effects of drugs, especially on children and youth. Among other efforts, nongovernmental organizations representing mothers should be constituted and professional associations should denounce their corrupt colleagues.
• Develop new economic alternatives to illegal drug cultivation, which provides profits at least equal to legal cultivations and thus tends to undermine the process of bringing the business of narco-trafficking to justice.
• Summon international democratic solidarity in support of judicial processes that investigate important cases of narco-trafficking corruption to stop its intimidating effects. This solidarity must be massive to be effective against narco-traffickers and their agents, and should be reflected both in civil society and investigative journalism.
  
• Present serious cases of narco-trafficking corruption, abuses of human rights, and other attempts to undermine democracy to the international courts, not only when such activity affects a particular country but also when it affects international relations and democratic agreements among different countries.
• Create a permanent group within the World Movement for Democracy to coordinate and evaluate activities to counter the efforts of narco-traffickers to violate the exercise of democratic rights in different countries. In this way, the solidarity of different sectors of civil society can be summoned to work together in strategic and effective ways.