Description
The global burden of homicide is now double that of conflict deaths and nearly 40% of homicides worldwide are connected to crime, mostly organized crime and gangs, and a body of scholarship on the dynamics of inter-cartel and state-cartel violence has emerged. While much of this new scholarship on “criminal wars” has relevance for thinking about the protection of the population, little explicitly addresses the question of how “civilians” are threatened or protected. This paper draws out from this large and growing body of work on criminal violence relevant information and insights on “civilian” insecurity and protection in contexts of large-scale criminal violence, with a primary focus on Mexico. It makes three main arguments. First, the threats facing the population from criminal violence are not well understood and more systematic data collection and analysis would be valuable. Second, international responses—including both legal developments and practical efforts by international actors to protect the population—have not kept up with changes in the nature of collective violence. Third, the government response has (ostensibly) focused on eliminating criminal groups, with less attention to the specific threats posed to the population or the vulnerability of the population to those threats. At the national and sub-national level in Mexico, there have been efforts to draw up legal and policy frameworks to support the victims of criminal violence and state responses to it—but the effectiveness of these in practice seems limited.
