DOI: 10.33917/es-2.200.2025.110-117

The object of the study is transnational organized crime in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the subject is socio-economic factors that affect regional security. Today, Latin America and the Caribbean is one of the “hottest” regions in terms of organized crime and drug trafficking. Violence is considered to be a consequence of transnational organized crime, the methods and scale of which are increasing every year. In the article, the authors examine the features of transnational organized crime, which is becoming the core of the most acute challenges in this part of the world, also analyze the main socio-economic factors that affect the level of regional security. The authors conclude that the most destabilizing effects are exerted by such factors as social inequality, corruption, weakness of law enforcement institutions, money laundering, false urbanization and a developed shadow sector of the economy.

References: 

1. Trends in world military expenditure, 2023. SIPRI Fact Sheet, April 2024, available at: https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2024-04/2404_fs_milex_2023.pdf

2. Pyatakov A.N. Transnatsional’naya organizovannaya prestupnost’ v stranakh Latinskoy Ameriki: sovremennye tendentsii razvitiya i voenno-silovye sposoby protivodeystviya [Transnational Organized Crime in Latin American Countries: Modern Development Trends and Military-force Methods of Counteraction]. Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta, Seriya 25: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya i mirovaya politika, 2023, vol. 15, no 2, pp. 65–93.

3. Violent Crime and Insecurity in Latin America and the Caribbean: a macroeconomic perspective. International Monetary Fund, October 2024, available at:https://www.researchgate.net/publication/385720836_Violent_Crime_and_Insecurity_in_Latin_America_and_the_Caribbean—A_Macroeconomic_Perspective

4. Global Study on Homicide 2023. UNDOC, available at: https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/gsh/2023/Global_study_on_homicide_2023_web.pdf

5. Violent Crime and Insecurity in Latin America and the Caribbean: a macroeconomic perspective. International Monetary Fund, October 2024, available at:https://www.researchgate.net/publication/385720836_Violent_Crime_and_Insecurity_in_Latin_America_and_the_Caribbean—A_Macroeconomic_Perspective

6. World Justice Project Rule of Law Index 2024, available at: https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/global/2024

7. Human Development Report 2023/2024: breaking the gridlock. UNDP, available at: https://www.undp.org/latin-america/press-releases/human-developmentlatin-america-and-caribbean-improves-more-other-regions-fails-recover-pre-pandemic-levels-reveals-undp

8. Global Economic Prospects 2024. World Bank, June 2024, available at: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/d644659c-2e22-410e-98a5-b8a40dc6c183/content

9. Godovoy otchet 2024 [Annual Report 2024]. Gruppa Vsemirnogo banka, available at: https://www.vsemirnyjbank.org/ru/about/annual-report#anchor-annual

The actual results of the Russian President’s visit to Latin America in summer 2014 and signed there documents allow to assume that the trip was quite pragmatic: to seize the opportunities for expansion of the Russian economic cooperation with close to us and friendly developing states. Cooperation, which has become even more important in the context of sanctions introduced by the West against Russia. In his interview with Alexander Ageev and Alexander Sidorov, director of the Institute of Latin American, Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladimir Davydov told about economic and geopolitical effects of the new vector of cooperation with Latin American countries.

Ecuador is located on the equator, and we are more acutely than anyone else feeling terrible phenomena occurring in the nature — hard changes of climate, floods, volcanic eruptions, extinction of some species. If in the nearest future destructive trends continue, nothing will remain for our children and grandchildren.