Brazil & Southern Cone - April 2026

Uruguay’s government led by President Yamandú Orsi is seeking to boost public support through new security initiatives. On 9 March Interior Minister Carlos Negro announced a new 10-year public security plan. This comes as violence linked to organised crime and drug trafficking is among the top concerns of the public, with homicide figures remaining high despite a slight decline in 2025.

Following a cabinet meeting led by Orsi on 9 March, Negro held a press conference to announce that the government was drafting a new initiative to be implemented over the course of the next 10 years. He said that the plan will have seven key pillars, comprising over 79 actions and more than 100 measures. He highlighted that the plan had been discussed with various departments as well as with civil society groups and was the result of consultations that took place throughout 2025, with five rounds of meetings to discuss issues such as homicides, gender violence and violence against children and teenagers, gun crime, drug trafficking, and cybercrimes and scams. 

The government’s increased efforts to signal that it is taking public security seriously come a year after Orsi’s inauguration in March 2025. His first year in office appears to show some encouraging data on crime. According to the government’s preliminary annual crime report released in late January, homicides in Uruguay in 2025 totalled 369, which is a 3.4% decrease compared to the murder tally of 382 registered for 2024.

Specialist website Insight Crime has also noted that Uruguay’s crime levels have been declining in recent years. However, in its 2025 homicide round-up, it highlighted that homicide figures are still higher than they were before 2018, the year that Uruguay faced a major crime wave, with government data showing a total of 420 homicides registered that year, the highest figure in the past 10 years. The 2025 homicide figure marks an 8.2% rise compared to the 341 killings in 2020 and a 25.9% increase compared to 293 killings registered in 2015.

Although Uruguay is considered a relatively safe country by regional standards, insecurity often ranks as the top public concern in opinion surveys. Insight Crime’s annual figures for 2025 show that Uruguay’s murder rate stood at 10.3 killings per 100,000 people, which is lower than the median homicide rate of 17.6 killings per 100,000 for the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean. However, in late February Uruguayan polling firm Equipos released the results of a survey which showed that ‘insecurity’ was still the most mentioned problem when respondents were asked to choose the biggest issues facing the country, receiving over 50% of total mentions.  

Given the importance that the public places on crime reduction measures, a failure by the government to communicate its efforts to address the issue would weigh on President Orsi’s popularity. Around a year into Orsi’s term, polling firm Cifra released data on 2 March showing Orsi’s disapproval rating stood at 46% while his approval rating was 31%. This disapproval rating has been ticking up throughout 2025. Cifra’s figures showed that in March 2025, when Orsi first took office, his approval was at 37% and his disapproval was at only 15%. Another polling firm, Factum, also released survey results on 2 March showing that Orsi’s disapproval rating has been rising. According to Factum’s figures, public disapproval for Orsi stood at 41% for the period of January-February 2026, marking an increase from the 33% disapproval rating registered for September-October 2025 and from 22% in May-June 2025.

Marset arrest

Uruguayan drug kingpin Sebastián Marset, the alleged leader of a criminal organisation known as the Primer Cartel Uruguayo, was captured in Bolivia on 13 March. His arrest was celebrated by government officials in Uruguay. Interior Minister Carlos Negro described the arrest as a “severe blow to drug trafficking” in the whole region. Negro gave a press conference in which he appeared to take some credit for the operation, highlighting the data and other relevant information about Marset that Uruguayan authorities provided to the Bolivian police.