Security & Strategic Review - February 2020

As violence in Colombia has surged to the highest levels since the country’s 2016 peace agreement, President Iván Duque’s government has been unequivocal in attributing responsibility to the remnants of the country’s guerrilla forces.... Read More

Peru’s struggle against drug trafficking organisations (DTOs) has been the bane of successive governments, and new defence minister Walter Martos’ pledge to intensify the fight against the DTOs in 2020 seemed, in many ways, like a continuation of this status quo.... Read More

Part of President Sebastián Piñera’s efforts to respond to the popular protests which have been shaking Chile since mid-October 2019 have focused on the pursuit of a security agenda, described as “an ensemble of measures to guarantee social peace and reinforce public order and citizen security.” Seven of the 11 measures are bills seeking to change legislation relating notably to police work and the definition of different crimes in the penal code.... Read More

Rosario, Argentina’s third most populous city, in the province of Santa Fe, is no stranger to upticks in violence.... Read More

In the space of two days in January, over 100 inmates linked to the Brazilian criminal organisation Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) escaped from prisons some 3,000km apart in Paraguay and Brazil.... Read More

The so-called ‘anti-crime package’ came into force in Brazil on 23 January.... Read More

Brazil’s police force is notoriously violent, with the high number of homicides committed by the police in Rio de Janeiro usually held up as an example of this.... Read More

Mexico climbed eight positions in the 2019 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) published by Transparency International (TI), the leading NGO in the global fight against graft.... Read More

The measures designed to ensure the independence of Mexico’s recently reformed federal attorney general’s office (FGR) are not being met and there are signs that the head of the FGR is too close to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.... Read More

Since assuming the presidency in May 2018, Carlos Alvarado and Costa Rica’s centre-left ruling Partido Acción Ciudadana (PAC) have overseen promising improvements in public security.... Read More

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele began 2020 by trumpeting a dramatic reduction in homicides since taking office for a five-year term in June 2019.... Read More

In January 2020 Haiti marked the ten-year anniversary of the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake which left over 220,000 reported dead and forced 1.5m into displacement.... Read More

A year ago, in January 2019, a split within the Caribbean Community (Caricom), and between leading Caricom members and the US, developed over policy towards Venezuela.... Read More