Latin American Centre Seminars: In denial: drug policy and the war on human rights in Mexico
Convener: Diego Sánchez Ancochea
Speaker: Monica Serrano, El Colegio de México
**Special Seminar - Please note this is a Friday**
Although from the outset prohibitionist drug control policies have been at odds with human rights logics, academic research on the interaction between drug policy and human rights has been in short supply. But it is not easy to ignore the role of drug control and drug policies behind Mexico´s human rights crisis. Whether by pushing state authorities to resort to military means, or by the fostering violent criminal competition, counter-narcotic policies have played and sad role in the making of the country’s humanitarian crisis. This presentation is part of a broader research project devoted to excavating the significant but often neglected atrocity legacies of drug-prohibition.
Mónica Serrano is Professor of International Relations at El Colegio de México where she has worked on the international relations of Latin America and North America, with particular reference to international institutions, security, human rights, transnational crime and civil-military relations. Her publications include: Transnational Organised Crime and International Security: Business as Usual? (2002); Human Rights Regimes in the Americas (2009); After Oppression: Transitional Justice in Latin America and Eastern Europe (2012); Mexico’s Security Failure: Collapse into Criminal Violence (2012); The International Politics of Human Rights. Rallying to the R2P Cause? (2014); El Tratado de Tlatelolco. Una mirada retrospectiva a medio siglo de su firma (2017) and “US-Mexican Relations: From NAFTA to Donald Trump” (2017). She was Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, and a member of the International Advisory Board of the FRAME Project “Fostering Human Rights Among European (External and Internal) Policies” and has been co-editor of Global Governance. Her current research focuses on drug policy and the last generation of human rights violations in Mexico and Latin America.
