The effects of criminal violence and State weakness on human rights abuses: The Mexican case

Scholars have found that traditional conflicts are the main drivers of human rights abuses. However, cases without civil or international conflicts could reach high levels of violence. This thesis is interested in the effects of criminal violence on physical violations of human rights, a type of conflict that is less studied. How the environment of criminal violence and state weakness affects human rights? The main argument is that this environment provokes systematic human rights abuses from State agents and criminals and generates distrust of citizens in governments. I test my idea through three papers that study the Mexican case, which is propitious because it has been in a criminal conflict since 2007. The thesis found that this environment increases State violence and disappearances and finally diminishes the elections, using official and original data obtained primarily through transparency requests.