Retired Peruvian Gen. Jorge Aquiles Carcovich Cortelezzi, now serving as chief of the firearms control agency DICSCAMEC, is being investigated by the special human rights prosecutor for Ayacucho region, Andrés Cáceres Ortega, for his involvement in the massacre of 25 schoolchildren and five campesinos by a military patrol in the village of Umasi (Canaria district, Fajardo province) on Nov. 27, 1983.

A day of pitched street-fighting on March 14 left three dead, some 35 wounded and 60 detained in Puerto Maldonado, capital of Peru's lowland Madre de Dios region, as small-scale independent gold miners continued their paro (civil strike) to oppose the government's announced crackdown on their activities. Thousands of miners blocked the city's streets, and attempted to seize the airport and the newly built Continental Bridge over the Rio Madre de Dios. Protesters hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at helmented National Police troops in full military gear, who responded with tear gas and live rifle fire.

Colombia's ambassador to Peru resigned March 14 after the Prosecutor General's Office ordered his arrest for alleged ties to paramilitary groups. Jorge Visbal Martelo Hannibal has been accused of working with paramilitaries while he was president of the National Rancher's Federation (FEDEGAN) from 1998 until 2004. He is specifically accused of collaborating with Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, AKA "Jorge 40"—notorious commander of the AUC paramilitary network's Northern Bloc. Martelo's defense assured the Prosecutor's Office that he will appear before the court in Bogota this week. President Juan Manuel Santos appointed Martelo as ambassador to Peru in February 2011. (Colombia Reports, La Republica, Lima, March 15)

The International Criminal Court (ICC) March 14 issued its first verdict, a unanimous decision that Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) militia leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo is guilty of the war crimes of enlisting and conscripting children under the age of 15 and using them to participate actively in hostilities. The three-judge Trial Chamber I found that Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo established beyond a reasonable doubt that Lubanga, former president of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), coordinated and actively supported the enlistment of child soldiers into his Patriotic Force for the Liberation of the Congo (FPLC) militia, the military wing of the UPC believed to have committed large-scale human rights abuses in Congo's violent Ituri district. Lubanga and his co-perpetrators designed to build an army for the purpose of establishing and maintaining political and military control over Ituri, a plan which resulted in boys and girls under the age of 15 being conscripted and used to participate actively in hostilities in 2002 and 2003. The court determined that Lubanga's contribution was essential to the common plan, that Lubanga personally used children below the age of 15 as his bodyguards, sex slaves and fighters and that he regularly saw guards of other UPC/FPLC staff members who were below the age of 15. Lubanga requested a separate sentencing hearing under article 76(2) of the Rome Statute, and he is entitled to appeal his conviction within 30 days. He faces life imprisonment.

In a surprise move on March 13, agents of Peru's National Police arrested three leaders of the struggle against the controversial Conga gold mining project in the northern region of Cajamarca, while charges were announced against some 40 others. Wilfredo Saavedra Marreros, leader of Cajamarca's Environmental Defense Front, was detained in the southern city of Tacna, where he had been invited to speak by student groups. Nearly simultaneoulsy in Cajamarca, police agents arrested Lucio Díaz Chávez, former regional president of the teachers union SUTEP, and César Tafur Tacilla, secretary general of the local construction workers union. Saavedra was taken in police custody to Cajamarca, where he was freed the next morning along with Díaz and Tafur. All three are charged with obstruction of public transport in connection with last year's protest mobilization against the Conga mine, and await orders to appear before a judge. The next day, the Cajamarca branch of the Fiscalía, Peru's attorney general, released a list of 41 activists facing identical charges—including virtually all the prominent leaders of the Cajamarca protest movement.

Hundreds of Haitians marked International Women's Day on March 8 with a march in downtown Port-au-Prince to demand justice for the women who were victims of the 1957-1986 Duvalier family dictatorship and to call for the departure of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), a 11,200-member international police and military force.

Mexican governance secretary Alejandro Poiré formally apologized to indigenous campesina Inés Fernández Ortega at a ceremony in Ayutla de los Libres in the southwestern state of Guerrero on March 6 for her rape by three Mexican soldiers in 2002. Along with Valentina Rosendo, who was raped by soldiers in a separate incident, Fernández filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish), which ruled in October 2010 that the Mexican government was responsible and must apologize to the two women. Federal attorney general Marisela Morales and Guerrero governor Angel Aguirre were also present for the apology.

Nicaragua's National Assembly observed International Women's Day on March 8 by unanimously passing a law which requires political parties to have women as at least 50% of their candidates for municipal posts. The government's special attorney for women, Deborah Gradinson, said Nicaraguan society remains in many ways "tolerant" of violence against women, with at least 17 women murdered so far in 2012 by partners, former partners or acquaintances. The María Elena Cuadra Movement of Working and Unemployed Women reported that only half of the 81 cases of women killed by violence in 2011 ever reached a court. "Justice for women, no more impunity" should be the slogan for the day, according to human rights activist Vilma Núñez.