operations and heavily armed approach to security operations fuelled human rights violations and placed police officers at risk. Police and other security forces also used excessive and unnecessary force in countries including the Bahamas, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela. Unlawful killings in Jamaica were part of a pattern of police operations that had remained largely unchanged for two decades, while many killings by security forces in the Dominican Republic were reported to have been unlawful. In both countries, security forces were exempt of reforms and were rarely held accountable. ACCESS TO JUSTICE AND THE FIGHT TO END IMPUNITY Rampant impunity allowed human rights abusers to operate without fear of the consequences, weakened the rule of law, and denied truth and redress to millions. Impunity was sustained by justice and security systems that remained underresourced, weak and often corrupt, compounded by a lack of political will to ensure their impartiality and independence. The resulting failure to bring the perpetrators of human rights violations to justice allowed organized crime and abusive law enforcement practices to take root and prosper. Denial of meaningful access to justice also left huge numbers of people – including in Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, Jamaica, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela – unable to claim their rights. In Jamaica, impunity prevailed for the decades-long pattern of alleged unlawful killings and extrajudicial executions by law enforcement officials. While more than 3,000 people have been killed by law enforcement officials since 2000, only a handful of officials have been held accountable to date. In June, the Commission of Enquiry into alleged human rights violations during the 2010 state of emergency made recommendations for police reform; by the end of the year Jamaica Amnesty International Report 2016/17 had yet to outline how it would implement the reforms. In Chile, the crimes of members of the security forces who beat, ill-treated and sometimes even killed peaceful demonstrators and others went largely unpunished. Military courts – which dealt with cases of human rights violations committed by members of the security forces – regularly failed to adequately investigate and prosecute officers suspected of having committed a crime, with trials usually failing to meet the most basic levels of independence and impartiality. In July, a court in Paraguay sentenced a group of peasant farmers to up to 30 years’ imprisonment for the murder of six police officers and other related crimes, in the context of a 2012 land dispute in the Curuguaty district. No investigation was opened into the deaths of 11 peasant farmers in the same incident, however. The General Prosecutor failed to provide a credible explanation for the lack of investigation into these deaths, or to respond to allegations that the crime scene had been tampered with and that peasant farmers had been tortured while in police custody. By the end of the year – and two years after a US Senate report on the issue – no one had been brought to justice in the USA for human rights violations committed in the secret CIA detention and interrogation programme after the attacks of 11 September 2001. The prosecution in Mexico of five marines – who were accused of the enforced disappearance of a man who was found dead weeks after his arrest in 2013 – was a positive step that offered hope of a new approach to tackling the country’s wave of disappearances. Across the country, the fate and whereabouts of tens of thousands of people remained unknown. In countries including Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru, ongoing impunity and lack of political will to investigate human rights violations and crimes under international law – including thousands of extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances – 29