Security & Strategic Review - June 2025

The recent approval of a ‘foreign agents’ law and arrests of high-profile human rights defenders (HRDs) have left little doubt that El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele is intent on taking an increasingly hard line on dissent.... Read More

The danger posed by illegal mining has received renewed attention in Peru and Ecuador following two massacres in late April and early May which left a total of 24 people dead.... Read More

The authoritarian government of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro has once again turned up the heat on the Essequibo dispute, a long-running sovereignty battle with neighbouring Guyana over the 160,000km² territory which is rich in oil and minerals.... Read More

The Geneva-headquartered NGO Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) announced on 13 May that it had registered 7.3m internally displaced people in Colombia in 2024.... Read More

President Gabriel Boric has endorsed a report from the presidential commission for peace and understanding, which proposed a roadmap to resolve the long-standing indigenous Mapuche conflict in southern Chile.... Read More

From the point of view of the São Paulo state government, the central zone of the state capital is an area rife with crime, homelessness, and drug addiction.... Read More

Officials from the justice & public security ministry have rejected a request from the US government to classify Brazil’s two most powerful criminal organisations, the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and the Comando Vermelho (CV), as terrorist groups.... Read More

President Javier Milei has issued a decree of necessity and urgency (DNU) to tighten Argentina’s migration laws.... Read More

On 8 May Mexico’s senate began discussions on a controversial telecommunications and broadcasting reform bill.... Read More

In the weeks running up to Mexico’s unprecedented judicial elections on 1 June, several civil society organisations warned of the potential risk of violence against candidates, given the worsening trend of electoral violence in the country.... Read More

Mexico registered nearly 26,000 internal displacements in 2024 due to criminal violence, more than double the number recorded in 2023 according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), an NGO monitoring global internal displacement.... Read More

In his third state of the nation speech to congress on 5 May, Costa Rica’s President Rodrigo Chaves was quick to claim progress in tackling insecurity.... Read More

In late April Guatemala’s discredited attorney general María Consuelo Porras ordered the arrest of deputy energy & mining minister Luis Pacheco, a former leader of indigenous organisation 48 Cantones de Totonicapán (48 Cantones), and 48 Cantones’ former treasurer Héctor Chaclán on charges including terrorism.... Read More

The Caribbean Community (Caricom) cannot complain that it is being ignored by the second Donald Trump administration.... Read More