Security & Strategic Review - March 2025

Security Minister Patricia Bullrich has been ramping up her rhetoric calling for greater efforts to tackle transnational crime around Argentina’s borders, highlighting government plans to shore up border security.... Read More

General Pedro Sánchez was sworn in as Colombia’s new defence minister on 19 February, replacing Iván Velásquez (2022-2025) as President Gustavo Petro bucked a longstanding norm that has seen the defence ministry under civilian control for most of the last four decades.... Read More

The 9 February first round of Ecuador’s presidential election dented perceptions of President Daniel Noboa as one of the more popular leaders in the region – a view that had been based on positive reactions to his tough crackdown on criminal gangs.... Read More

The land area dedicated to coca cultivation in Bolivia increased by 4% in 2023, according to a report published on 18 February by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).... Read More

During a visit to El Bolsón on 11 February, a town in the southern province of Río Negro, Argentina’s Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, alongside Defence Minister Luis Petri, announced that the government will create a federal emergency agency to combat the intense wildfires raging through various Patagonian provinces such as Río Negro, Chubut, and Neuquén.... Read More

Justice Minister Jaime Gajardo Falcón and a Chilean delegation of government officials travelled to Brazil on 30 January and to Colombia on 3 February to discuss prison policies.... Read More

The national rate of violent deaths – taking into account deaths registered as intentional murders, femicides, robberies resulting in death, and physical injuries resulting in death – has fallen every year since 2021 in Brazil.... Read More

On 19 February the US State Department announced a list of six Mexican cartels to be designated as foreign terrorist organisations (FTOs), as US President Donald Trump made good on a key campaign promise.... Read More

Javier May, the governor of Mexico’s south-eastern state of Tabasco, appointed a new public security minister and state police commissioner on 15 February.... Read More

The latest Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), released by global anti-corruption NGO Transparency International (TI) on 11 February, described Mexico as being on a “downward swing”.... Read More

“The most unprecedented and extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world”.... Read More

Various Honduran organisations such as Plataforma Agraria, a regional network of over 30 peasant organisations, as well as international institutions like the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Honduras (OACNUDH) have highlighted escalating violence in the northern Bajo Aguán region since late December 2024.... Read More

On 12 February El Salvador’s 60-member unicameral legislature, which is controlled by President Nayib Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas (NI), approved a change removing Art.... Read More

“A lawless, repressive army that has been given constitutional status”.  This was the response by exiled Nicaraguan opposition writer Gioconda Belli to recently approved changes to the constitution which create a voluntary police force.... Read More

Addressing the Caribbean Community (Caricom) heads of government conference in Barbados on 19 February, United Nations (UN) Secretary General António Guterres noted: “The exquisite beauty of the Caribbean is famed the world over.... Read More