economic need rather than soaring violence and homicides, not to mention the daily threats, extortion and intimidation that most of the population faced under struggles for territorial control from gangs. In the USA, tens of thousands of unaccompanied children, as well as people travelling with their families, were apprehended when attempting to cross the southern border during the year. Families were detained for months, many without proper access to medical care and legal counsel. Throughout the year, the IACHR expressed concern about the situation of Cuban and Haitian migrants attempting to reach the USA. Elsewhere, migrants and their families faced pervasive discrimination, exclusion and ill-treatment. In the Bahamas, there was widespread ill-treatment of undocumented migrants from countries including Haiti and Cuba. The Dominican Republic deported thousands of people of Haitian descent – including Dominican-born people who were effectively rendered stateless – while often failing to respect international law and standards on deportations. Upon arrival to Haiti, many people who had been deported settled in makeshift camps, where they lived in appalling conditions. Despite a commitment from newly elected authorities in the Dominican Republic to address the situation of stateless individuals, tens of thousands of people remained stateless following a 2013 Constitutional Court ruling which retroactively and arbitrarily deprived them of their nationality. In February, the IACHR described a “situation of statelessness… of a magnitude never before seen in the Americas”. More than 30,000 Syrian refugees were resettled in Canada, with a further 12,000 resettled in the USA. PUBLIC SECURITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS Non-state actors – including corporations and criminal networks – wielded growing influence and were responsible for increasing levels of violence and human rights abuses. 28 Overall, however, states mostly failed to respond to the situation in a way that complied with international standards, with significant human rights violations resulting from a tendency to militarize public security. Some states responded to social unrest – and particularly peaceful protests – with an increased use of the army to undertake public security operations, and adopted military techniques, training and equipment for use by the police and other law enforcement agencies. Although tackling organized crime was frequently used as justification for militarized responses, in reality they enabled states to further violate human rights rather than address the root causes of violence. In countries such as Venezuela, for example, military action in response to protests was often followed by torture and other ill-treatment of protesters. Protests across the USA – which followed the deadly shooting by police in July of Philando Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Louisiana – saw police use heavyduty riot gear and military-grade weapons in response, raising concerns about demonstrators’ right to peaceful assembly. There were also concerns about the degree of force police used against largely peaceful protests opposing the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. Meanwhile, the US authorities again failed to track the exact number of people killed by law enforcement officials; media reports put the numbers at almost 1,000 in 2016, and at least 21 people died after police used electric-shock weapons on them. The Olympic Games hosted by Brazil in August were marred by human rights violations by security forces, with the authorities and the event’s organizers failing to implement effective measures to prevent abuses. Police killings in Rio de Janeiro increased as the city prepared to host the Games. Violent police operations took place throughout the event with severe repression of protests, including through unnecessary and excessive use of force. Throughout the year, the country’s counter-narcotic Amnesty International Report 2016/17