Security & Strategic Review - December 2018

Latin America’s police forces are not doing very well...

The kidnap and murder of two Ecuadorean journalists and their driver last March by Colombian rebels operating in the border area continues to be a bone of contention between the two governments...

All attempts to seek a peaceful way out of the Venezuelan crisis – a crisis that threats to turn into a humanitarian disaster – seem to fail because the opposition cannot unite...

One of the consequences of the on-going socio-economic and political turmoil in Venezuela has been an unprecedented exodus of men, women and children, who are fleeing in search of food, safety, employment, and a better quality of life...

Penitentiary system services in Brazil’s northern state of Roraima became paralysed in early December, as prison guards demanded to be paid...

On 19 November Brazilian drug trafficker Marcelo ‘Piloto’ Pinheiro Veiga was expelled from Paraguay on presidential orders...

The commander-in-chief of Chile’s army, General Ricardo Martínez, has revealed that corrupt army officials have been selling their government-issue firearms to criminal and drug trafficking organisations...

Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) took office as Mexico’s new president on 1 December, the point at which his new 2018-2024 security strategy came into effect...

While Panama remains relatively safe compared with its Central American neighbours, security has emerged as the second-biggest voter concern ahead of the May 2019 general election...

For many years, Haiti had no army (FAD’H)...

Since former soldier Gary Griffith was appointed Commissioner of Police in August, there have been huge expectations, by no means played down by Griffiths himself, that he will produce significant results in reducing crime...

JAMAICA | Parliament votes down state of emergency...