Costa Rica and El Salvador, two countries highly affected by drug-related violence in recent years, have urged the United Nations to help fight drug cartels and organized crime, and called on Member States with high numbers of drug consumers to take the lead on the issue.

“Our region has become prey to malevolent geopolitics,” Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla Miranda told the General Assembly’s annual general debate last night.

“As a result of our location between the largest centres of production and demand in the world, we have become a target to the dynamic of death that they both create, and we must bear the burden of extraordinary material, institutional and human costs What for the main perpetrators of these atrocities are mere ‘collateral damages,’ for Central Americans represent extreme challenges and deep wounds.”