Security & Strategic Review - November 2025

The US government has lifted sanctions on Paraguay’s former president Horacio Cartes (2013-2018).... Read More

Of all the tools that the US government could use to try and bring Colombia in line with its policy objectives, decertifying the country as a counter-narcotics ally was among the bluntest.... Read More

The impeachment of President Dina Boluarte on 9 October was met with an almost audible sigh of relief in Peru.... Read More

An assassination attempt against two Venezuelan activists in the Colombian capital Bogotá has alarmed the exile community and triggered demands for President Gustavo Petro’s government to do more to protect the country’s large population of Venezuelan emigrants, who number over 2.8m and include many dissidents and opposition figures who have fled political repression at home.... Read More

Since September, various states in Brazil have been reeling from a wave of methanol poisonings linked to contaminated drinks.... Read More

A bill passed by the Rio de Janeiro state legislative assembly (Alerj) in September, which proposed offering a bonus to policemen for the ‘neutralisation’ of criminals, has sparked human rights concerns.... Read More

In September a high-profile femicide case in Buenos Aires province sparked widespread concern over violence against women.... Read More

In October Mexico’s federal congress approved a contentious reform to the law governing the use of the amparo, a key legal mechanism that protects the public from actions of the State.... Read More

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum took to the main square, or Zócalo, in Mexico City (CDMX) on 5 October to mark her first full year in office.... Read More

When security forces raided a site in Vista Hermosa municipality, Michoacán state at the end of September, they expected to find a training camp for organised crime.... Read More

Honduras’ leftist Partido Libertad y Refundación (Libre) government led by President Xiomara Castro has come under fresh pressure as the country marked the one-year anniversary of the murder of environmental activist Juan López, who was shot dead by hitmen on 14 September 2024 in Tocoa municipality, Colón department [SSR-25-11], in northern Honduras, a region impacted by ongoing conflict over land reform and water resources.... Read More

On 24 September Guatemala’s left-of-centre government led by President Bernardo Arévalo presented a new report indicating that, through the work of the presidency’s secretariat of food and nutritional security (Sesan), there had been a 28% reduction in cumulative cases of acute malnutrition in 50 municipalities prioritised under a government protocol in the first eight months of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024.... Read More

On 10 September Panama assumed the pro tempore presidency of the council of ministers of the Central American environmental and development commission (CCAD), which is part of the Central American integration system (Sica).... Read More

There has been a flurry of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Haiti-related activity sparked in part by the looming, and certain to be missed, February deadline for the political transition, and in part by recognition that the situation in Haiti has, in the words of the United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, “reached a boiling point”.... Read More

When the Caribbean Community (Caricom) celebrated its 50th anniversary in July 2023, its then-chairman, Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, remarked that “too many of our citizens are sceptical and some downright dismissive of the value and benefit of Caricom”.... Read More