The Center of Excellence holds the 7th Technical Meeting of the Working Group on the Latin America and the Caribbean Crime Victimization Survey Initiative (LACSI)

Mexico City, 22-23 October 2019. As part of regional technical cooperation of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the 7th Technical Meeting of the Working Group of the LACSI initiative was held, with the participation of officials from the national statistical offices and security authorities of 18 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, the Organization of American States (OAS), the United Nations Latin American Institute for the Crime Prevention and Treatment of Offenders (ILANUD, for its acronym in Spanish) and the Infosegura y Carisecure projects of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

The Working Group is led by the Center of Excellence, which serves as Technical Secretary. This regional initiative seeks to improve measures of victimization, perception of insecurity, trust in institutions and the causes of non-reporting, fundamental information to monitor and evaluate prevention, security and justice policies.

At the opening of the event, Michael Jandl, Research Officer of the Data Development and Dissemination Unit of UNODC, stressed that the LACSI Initiative has been decisive in improving the quality and availability of data on victimization in the region. On the part of the LPOMEX, Salomé Flores, Coordinator of the Center of Excellence, highlighted the importance of this Working Group, as it helps to generate information to report the progress of four indicators of Objective 16 of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. Additionally, stressed that when governments have quality data, accountability is improved and evidence-based decision making is strengthened.

This meeting presented the experiences of Argentina, Peru, El Salvador, Paraguay, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Colombia and Mexico, which have recently conducted victimization surveys or adopted the LACSI initiative.

As a result of the two days of the meeting, the members of the Working Group of the LACSI initiative agreed on innovations to strengthen the measurement of criminal victimization in the Latin American and Caribbean region.

If you work or are interested in issues related to victimization surveys, we invite you to learn more about this initiative on the Center of Excellence website: /index.php/viclab1/