Perry Center Professor of Practice William Godnick and Adjunct Professor Juan Carlos Gómez, with the support of the Inter American Institute of Human Rights (IIDH), facilitated a dialogue among 36 military, police, civilian government and civil society officials from 9 Central American and Caribbean countries on Operationalizing Human Rights Standards in Complex Security Environments. The dialogue took place at the IIDH headquarters in San Jose, Costa Rica on March 1-2, 2017 and also included a visit to the Inter American Court of Human Rights.

The subject matter exchange addressed the issues related to military participation in efforts to promote citizen security and to combat crime and violence as well as cross-government efforts to develop, implement and evaluate human rights education for military, police and civilian institutions. Additional contributions to the event were made by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Human Rights Initiative of the US Southern Command. The event culminated with a group exercise where participants were asked to design a security operation in a densely populated urban environment taking into account criteria for cost, effectiveness and human rights risk.