Crime Archive

A year after 43 rural college students were forcibly disappeared in southern Mexico, human rights activists, teachers unions and university students have again taken to the streets to demand justice. For many, the tragedy—known as Ayotzinapa, after the name of the teachers’ college the students attended—has become symbolic of the violence and impunity afflicting Mexico as a whole. Earlier this month, a long-awaited report by the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights cast doubts on the official version of events and pointed to extraordinary deficiencies in the investigation carried out by the federal government. On Sept. 26, […]

This summer, Reuters reported on the rise in illegal drug trafficking and production in West Africa. In an email interview, Joanne Csete, an expert on health and human rights issues, discussed West Africa’s growing role in the global drug market. WPR: What role has West Africa played in the global drug market in the past decade? Joanne Csete: There is some evidence that significant transit routes have been established through West Africa for cocaine from Latin America destined for Europe, though the volume may have diminished in the past few years. It is hard to judge trends with seizure data, […]

Today the world is riveted by the tragic migrant flows from North Africa and the Middle East into Europe. Driven by conflict in their homelands, hundreds of thousands of refugees have risked—and sometimes lost—everything in search of security and opportunity far from their troubled nations. While addressing this humanitarian crisis is the most pressing concern for Europe, the United States and the rest of the world community, political leaders must also look further into the future: Today’s migrant crisis is the bow wave of tomorrow’s security challenges. In the contemporary security environment, a peace settlement or the removal of a […]

The good times are winding down in much of Latin America, and with them ends not only a period of economic growth but very possibly also one of relative political stability. As the global economy and financial markets strain to adjust to a slowdown in China, for years one of the world’s principal engines of growth, no region of the world will feel a more painful punch from the new reality. In fact, the International Monetary Fund’s growth projections show Latin America and the Caribbean with the slowest economies of any major region this year. Such a sharp deceleration inevitably […]