On May 9th, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) published the results of its 2017 Armed Conflict Study, which places Mexico as the second country with the highest number of deaths (23,000 counted in 2016) after Syria (50,000), and before Afghanistan (17,000) and Iraq (16,000). Mexico is the only country in America in the top ten.

The IISS claims that the levels violence coming from the fight against organized crime in Mexico reached those of a country in open war. “It is very unusual for criminal violence to reach a level similar to an armed conflict. But it happened in the Northern Triangle of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador) and especially in Mexico”, the IISS warned.

The Mexican Interior Ministry (SEGOB in its Spanish acronym) and Ministry for Foreign Affairs (SRE in its Spanish acronym) criticized the report questioning both the figures that it uses for being “unlikely” and “lacking technical rigor”; such as the fact that “Organized crime violence is a regional phenomenon that goes beyond the borders that Mexico shares with the United States, Guatemala and Belize, among many other countries. The challenges Mexico faces in this area cannot be isolated from related phenomena in other jurisdictions, such as arms trafficking and drug demand. The fight against transnational organized crime must be analyzed in an integral way.”

For more information in Spanish:

México es el segundo país del mundo con más muertos por “guerra”, según estudio (SDP Noticias, 9 de mayo de 2017)

México alcanzó los niveles de violencia de un país en guerra abierta: IISS (Proceso, 9 de mayo de 2017)

México, el segundo país más violento del mundo: IISS (La Jornada, 9 de mayo de 2017)

La SRE y Segob niegan que haya un conflicto armado en México; Trump retuitea encuesta inglesa (Sin Embargo, 10 de mayo de 2017)

Reporte del IISS sobre la violencia en México “carece de rigor técnico”: Segob y SRE (Proceso, 10 de mayo de 2017)

For more information from SIPAZ:

Nacional : Pobres resultados diez años después de iniciar la guerra contra el crimen organizado ; El Ejército seguirá en las calles, EPN (16 de diciembre de 2016)