The Americas, 4 August 2025. In El Salvador, the Legislative Assembly is no longer a separate and independent body. The elected body is now fully aligned with the interests of the executive branch, neither dissent nor democratic debate are allowed. Since 2021, the ruling party Nuevas Ideas, founded by Nayib Bukele, has held a supermajority that has approved constitutional reforms, appointed judges and the attorney general, and torn down institutional pillars without democratic debate or checks and balances.
The current reform and other recent legislative reforms have been approved through fast-track procedures without being debated on the Assembly floor. The Foreign Agents Act, for example, threatens to dismantle civil society organisations and media outlets that receive international funding.
In May 2021, the Assembly dismissed the entire Constitutional Chamber and the Attorney General and replaced them without any transparency or public debate. Similarly, the reform that removed judges and prosecutors over the age of 60 was a hard blow to judicial independence; it was conducted without any effective processes in place and facilitated the establishment of a judiciary that is answerable to the executive branch and devoid of checks and balances.
Since 2022, under a protracted state of emergency, the government has detained more than 86,000 people without due process. Many of those detained have no connections to gangs. Among the detained are academics and human rights defenders, notably Ruth López, Enrique Anaya, Alejandro Henríquez, and José Ángel Pérez.
What is happening in El Salvador is not an isolated series of events; it is part of a pattern of strong-arm authoritarianism that has been gaining ground in Central America for years and which seeks to weaken the principle of separation of powers.
We, the undersigned organisations, in response to this regional situation:
– urgently call on the international community and human rights protection bodies to actively monitor the situation in El Salvador and to call for the rule of law and compliance with international human rights obligations;
– urge multilateral organisations to use their monitoring mechanisms and leverage to respond to authoritarian reforms by making cooperation conditional on respect for human rights and democratic principles;
– encourage democratic governments to speak out clearly against these setbacks and to collectively defend constitutional order and the rule of law;
– call on organised civil society to strengthen its solidarity networks and to continue to report on and condemn the threats to [democratic] institutions and fundamental rights.