Slow economic growth has characterised Mexico’s economic performance for much of the past decade. Taking office in December 2012, the government of Enrique Peña Nieto set out to boost Mexico’s competitiveness with a package of structural reforms affecting a number of sectors, including energy, telecommunications, tax, labour and education. The package’s most eye-catching component was a constitutional reform designed to end decades of state monopoly in the oil and gas sector and attract investment from major international oil companies. Though low oil prices and a degree of nervousness over the potential effects of monetary tightening in the US have dampened initial investor and market enthusiasm over the reforms, the outlook for the Mexican economy remains stable, with demand from the US expected to support Mexican activity, despite low domestic demand and business confidence.

Mexico has embarked on a bold package of structural reform to break free from three decades of slow growth, low productivity, pervasive labour market informality and high income inequality. The package of reforms has already helped to improve confidence and bodes well for 2015 and beyond.To make the most of this impressive package, Mexico will need to improve its governance and institutional capacity to ensure effective implementation. The government elected in 2012 quickly reached a historic agreement among previously divergent political parties on an ambitious consensus-based package of reforms known as the "Pacto por Mâxico", aimed at putting the country back on a path of prosperity. Major structural measures have been legislated to improve competition, education, energy, the financial sector, labour, infrastructure, telecommunications and the tax system, among many, and implementation has started in earnest. If fully implemented, these reforms could increase annual trend per capita GDP growth by as much as one percentage point over the next ten years, with the energy reforms having the most front-loaded effects, and the education reforms more lasting effects in the years to come.

The most significant human rights-related problems included law enforcement and military involvement in serious abuses, such as unlawful killings, torture, and disappearances. Impunity and corruption in the law enforcement and justice system remained serious problems. Organized criminal groups killed, kidnapped, and intimidated citizens, migrants, journalists, and human rights defenders. The following additional problems persisted: poor prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; threats and violence against human rights defenders and journalists; threats and violence against migrants; violence against women; domestic violence; abuse of persons with disabilities; threats and violence against some members of the indigenous population; threats against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) persons; trafficking in persons; and child labor, including forced labor by children. Impunity for human rights abuses remained a problem throughout the country with extremely low rates of prosecution for all forms of crime. Neither general information about government investigations of human rights allegations nor information about specific cases was easily available to the public.

Lawless elements are ascendant in Mexico, as evidenced by the operations of criminal cartels engaged in human and drug trafficking, often with the active support or acquiescence of government actors. The sharp increase in the number of victims of homicide, disappearances and torture over the past decade is unparalleled in the country's recent history. According to editors Alejandro Anaya-Muñoz and Barbara Frey, the "war on drugs" launched in 2006 by President Felipe Calderón and the corrupting influence criminal organizations have on public institutions have empowered both state and nonstate actors to operate with impunity. Impunity, they argue, is the root cause that has enabled a human-rights crisis to flourish, creating a climate of generalized violence that is carried out, condoned, or ignored by the state and precluding any hope for justice. Mexico's Human Rights Crisis offers a broad survey of the current human rights issues that plague Mexico. Essays focus on the human rights consequences that flow directly from the ongoing "war on drugs" in the country, including violence aimed specifically at women, and the impunity that characterizes the government's activities. Contributors address the violation of the human rights of migrants, in both Mexico and the United States, and cover the domestic and transnational elements and processes that shape the current human rights crisis, from the state of Mexico's democracy to the influence of rulings by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the decisions of Mexico's National Supreme Court of Justice. Given the scope, the contemporaneity, and the gravity of Mexico's human rights crisis, the recommendations made in the book by the editors and contributors to curb the violence could not be more urgent. Contributors: Alejandro Anaya-Muñoz, Karina Ansolabehere, Ariadna Estévez, Barbara Frey, Janice Gallagher, Rodrigo Gutiérrez Rivas, Susan Gzesh, Sandra Hincapié, Catalina Pérez Correa, Laura Rubio Díaz-Leal, Natalia Saltalamacchia, Carlos Silva Forné, Regina Tamés, Javier Treviño-Rangel, Daniel Vázquez, Benjamin James Waddell.

This is one of a series of special reports that have been published on a semi-annual basis by Justice inMexico since 2010, each of which examines issues related to crime and violence, judicial sector reform,and human rights in Mexico. The Drug Violence in Mexico report series examines patterns of crime and violence attributable to organized crime, and particularly drug trafficking organizations in Mexico. This report was authored by Kimberly Heinle, Octavio Rodriguez Ferreira, and David A. Shirk, and builds on the work of past reports in this series. The report was formally released on April 20, 2016 and was made possible bythe generous support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. This report does not represent the views or opinions of the University of San Diego or the sponsoring organization.

The human rights records of more than ninety countries and territories is put into perspective in Human Rights Watch’s signature yearly report, which, in the 2014 volume, highlighted the armed conflict in Syria, international drug reform, drones and electronic mass surveillance, and more, and also featured photo essays of child marriage in South Sudan, the cost of the Sochi Winter Olympics in Russia, and religious fighting in Central African Republic. Reflecting extensive investigative work undertaken in 2014 by Human Rights Watch staff, in close partnership with domestic human rights activists, the annual World Report 2015 is an invaluable resource for journalists, diplomats, and citizens, and is a must-read for anyone interested in the fight to protect human rights in every corner of the globe.

Freedom in the World, the Freedom House flagship survey whose findings have been published annually since 1972, is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. The survey ratings and narrative reports on 195 countries and fourteen territories are used by policymakers, the media, international corporations, civic activists, and human rights defenders to monitor trends in democracy and track improvements and setbacks in freedom worldwide. The Freedom in the World political rights and civil liberties ratings are determined through a multi-layered process of research and evaluation by a team of regional analysts and eminent scholars. The analysts used a broad range of sources of information, including foreign and domestic news reports, academic studies, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, individual professional contacts, and visits to the region, in conducting their research. The methodology of the survey is derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and these standards are applied to all countries and territories, irrespective of geographical location, ethnic or religious composition, or level of economic development.