The Threat List

Status:Conflict

North AmericaConflictSince 2006Deep-sourcedhigh confidenceSourcing reviewed 2026-09-13

Mexico Cartel Violence

One of the highest absolute homicide counts in the world outside a declared war.

Severity score

49.9

Serious · default weighting

Trajectory

Steady

How this is ranked

What this is

Organised crime groups contest drug, fuel and extortion markets across large parts of Mexico, with around thirty thousand homicides a year and over a hundred thousand people registered as disappeared. Journalists and local officials are killed at high rates.

Score breakdown

Each factor is a 0–100 relative severity index, not the raw figure or a specific time period. The actual counts and periods are listed under "Standardized Impact" on the right.

Loss of life

70

Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.

Lives negatively impacted

58

People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.

Financial cost

52

Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.

Environmental impact

4

Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.

Trajectory

34

Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.

Audit trail

Everything this entry has been through — when it was first searched for, queued, reviewed and approved, and how its figures and rank have moved since.

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