Peruvians Need a Security Policy, Not a Photo with Bukele

Nobody was surprised when Peruvian President Keiko Fujimori announced a visit to El Salvador.

In the past few years, a number of heads of states and security ministers have traveled to El Salvador to learn about President Nayib Bukele's security policies. Many, grappling with violence and organized crime in their own countries, see El Salvador's dramatic drop in homicides as a model to emulate.

Peru is not an exception. The country's homicide rate has increased by about 50 percent over the last decade. Extortion has also skyrocketed. Violence against public transport workers has become particularly acute, and drivers and shopkeepers report paying criminal groups bribes to keep working, while many businesses have closed due to threats. Much of this violence is driven by criminal groups that profit from a widening range of illicit operations, from drug trafficking to illegal mining and extortion.

It is easy to see why so many view Bukele's security policies as an antidote. According to official figures, El Salvador's homicide rate fell from 7.8 per 100,000 in 2022, when a state of emergency was declared, to 1.3 per 100,000 in 2025. The most significant decline had already occurred in the preceding years, beginning in 2016. After decades suffering under rampant gang violence, many Salvadorans say they finally feel free to move around their neighborhoods.

But El Salvador's security policy has also taken a brutal toll. In the last four years, security forces have detained over 93,000 people, making El Salvador the country with the highest reported incarceration rate in the world. Some police officers have acknowledged that they use fabricated or uncorroborated evidence to make arrests.

President Bukele has said that those who are innocent would be released. But his own legal changes have made it harder, if not impossible, to establish the truth about who was involved in gang violence and who wasn't. In the meantime, relatives of people detained have not been able to see their loved ones for years or even speak with them over the phone. Hundreds have died in custody in circumstances that are yet to be investigated. And the few people who have been released have reported, in many cases, being tortured and held in inhumane detention conditions.

The Salvadoran government presents mass arrests and due process violations as a fair price to pay for security, a framing that has resonated with a population long exposed to gang violence. But Peruvians need not choose between security and rights; they can have both.

Fujimori should work to strengthen the capacity of criminal investigators, prosecutors, and judges to go after drug trafficking organizations, extortion rings, and illegal mining networks in accordance with the rule of law. That effort should go hand in hand with professionalizing the police, whom the vast majority of Peruvians surveyed say they do not trust, and whose officers have in some cases been implicated in the very networks they are supposed to dismantle.

A key obstacle to fighting organized crime in Peru is laws passed by Congress, often with support from Fujimori's party, Fuerza Popular, that make it easier for organized crime groups to thrive. In recent years, Congress has sharply limited prosecutors' ability to obtain evidence and investigative leads from defendants willing to cooperate, a significant blow to efforts to dismantle criminal groups and detect connections to corrupt officials.

It has also modified the definition of "organized crime" in the Criminal Code to exclude many corruption offenses, while putting obstacles in the way of investigative searches. In addition, it has repeatedly extended the deadline to incorporate illegal and informal miners into the legal mining economy, allowing them to operate without accountability in a sector that criminal groups increasingly use to make and launder money.

Posturing as an iron-fisted leader during a visit to El Salvador is easy, but delivering results at home is not. Making Peruvians safe from organized crime will require strengthening the justice system and having a professional and accountable police. That may be less glamorous, but it is what Peruvians need.

Juanita Goeberttus is the Americas director at Human Rights Watch.