Sheinbaum oversaw a dramatic drop in violent crime as mayor of Mexico City.
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So, what can Sheinbaum do to stem the violence? Building on Amlo’s efforts to help young people – the societal group most exposed to cartel recruitment – find stable employment is one potential solution.
In 2019, the Mexican government introduced an employment programme called Jóvenes construyendo el futuro (Youth building the future) to give unemployed and uneducated young men opportunities to develop their skills in an attempt to reduce their participation in criminal violence.
However, these kind of programmes may be targeting the wrong people. Research has found that most of the young men that are currently recruited by criminal organisations in Mexico were not unemployed beforehand, but instead working in precarious conditions.
In fact, data shows that 70.7% of the young men who are imprisoned in Mexico for murder have worked in agricultural and manual jobs with low wages and no access to social security. It is these people, for whom the cartels are an attractive alternative, that Sheinbaum must focus on.
Read more:
Mexican government failing to provide decent jobs for vulnerable youth – leaving the door open to cartel recruitment
She also needs to coordinate with the US, Colombia and governments across Central America in their efforts to fight crime. Research shows that Colombia’s drug seizure policy has increased the profitability of the narcotics trade and, subsequently, has given rise to more violence in the Mexico.
One study, for instance, found that the decline in cocaine supply in Colombia between 2006 and 2009 could have contributed to as much as 14% of the increase in violence in Mexico over the same period.
People throughout Mexico expect Sheinbaum to tackle the violence spreading across the country. But to do so, she must be prepared to step out from her predecessors shadow, or else Mexico could soon be on a brink of a disaster.
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Publish date : 2024-10-01 05:22:00
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