In an unprecedented decision favoring transparency about the impact of drug trafficking, Mexico’s Federal Institute for Access to Information (IFAI) ordered the national intelligence service to furnish precise data on the number of people killed in clashes between authorities and organized crime groups, El Universal reports.
IFAI rejected the refusal by the Center for Investigation and National Security (CISEN) to comply with a request for such information. The intelligence service claimed not to possess such data, La Crónica explains.
IFAI argued that such information was presumed to be in the intelligence service’s hands and should be provided when requested Proceso says.
The data must be broken down by month and entity and should also indicate whether the dead were members of drug trafficking groups, police (federal, state, or municipal), soldiers or marines, and Mexican civilian or foreign civilians, Radio Fórmula reports.
Violence linked to drug trafficking in Mexico has risen since 2000 and in the last four years alone has claimed 34,000 lives. However, much of the information about the effects of this violence and the operations against it remain outside the public record and are kept secret by authorities.
For more information about information access laws in Latin America, see this Knight Center map.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
