Whack-a-mole Drug War - a Mexican Viewpoint: Mexicans Must Face the Truth: We are at War: El Universal, Mexico

Opinion by Jorge Luis Sierra,

El Unversal

translated by 'World Meets Us'

Mexicans Must Face the Truth: We are at War: El Universal, Mexico: "violence in Mexico is approaching the level of a war, as described by the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and its associated protocols.

The first criterion of an armed conflict under international humanitarian law is that the country in question achieves a minimum threshold of armed hostilities involving military rather than police forces. Mexico has surpassed this threshold of intensity and fulfills this first criterion of an armed conflict.

Another criterion is the number of casualties. International regulations distinguish armed conflict from lesser forms of violence like rioting or banditry, because the first are characterized by casualties that exceed 1,000 combat deaths per year. In Mexico, we have had more than 34,000 in four years, placing our country in a state of large-scale armed conflict."