MEXICO CITY (Times Media Mexico). – Once again and as usual, Mexico appears at the top of the list of countries in the Americas with the highest impunity rate, ranking 60th out of 69 nations studied in the 2020 Global Impunity Index (GII).
According to Luis Ernesto Derbez Bautista, rector of the University of the Americas in Puebla (UDLAP), the institution that presented the results of the third edition of the IGI-2020, in the 2017 edition Mexico ranked 66 out of 69 and in the IGI-2015 it obtained the 58th place out of 59 cases studied.
Since the first report, published in 2015, it has been highlighted that high rates of impunity can be interrelated with various problems such as socioeconomic inequality, access to justice, fragility of the rule of law, insufficient economic development, difficulties in attracting new sources of foreign investment, tourism and increased human rights violations.
According to IGI-2020, Mexico needs to take urgent measures to reduce the high rates of impunity. The need to increase the number of judges is vital, as there are 2.17 judges for every 100,000 inhabitants when the international average is 17.87.
Derbez Bautista explained that the study aims to make qualitative terms the global problem of impunity and its direct effect on other global phenomena such as inequality, corruption, and violence.
Due to the high scores in Mexico in the structural dimension (both in the justice and security systems), this should be a priority.
Mexico needs to take urgent measures to reduce the high rates of impunity, and the need to increase the number of judges is vital.
The IGI-2020 registers an average of 17.83 judges per 100,000 inhabitants. In comparison, Mexico has only 2.17 judges per 100,000 inhabitants.
This figure contrasts with that of the country with the least impunity: Slovenia, a European republic that registered 42.77 judges per 100,000 inhabitants.
The IGI-2020 reinforces the certainty that very high impunity levels remain in Mexico due to shortcomings that have been repeatedly pointed out throughout these five years.
The poor performance of the security and justice systems needs to be corrected if the impunity and corruption prevailing in the country are to be ended.
For Mexico, it is necessary to take urgent measures to reduce the high rates of impunity. Greater budgets are needed for the security and justice systems. These resources must be reflected in an increase in their human capacities, infrastructure, and professionalization.
Finally, it can be mentioned that the increase in resources to these government systems, in recent years, has not been positively correlated to reducing the levels of impunity and violence in the country, since the key to the problem lies in the corruption of the use of these resources and the lack of supervision and auditing of the functioning of the country’s institutions at the national and local levels.
