How Mexico became the second deadliest country in the world

A few hours ago, US President, Donald Trump tweeted that. Now, LIB can confirm that the President's claim about Mexico is based on a International Institute for Strategic Studies survey that measures deaths related to 'armed conflict.' 

The report found that in 2016, 23,000 people died in Mexico's narcotics drug wars thereby hosting the second deadliest conflict on the planet in 2016, ranking behind only Syria's bloody civil war and leaving Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen far behind.   

According to Anastasia Voronkova, the editor of the survey, 'the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan claimed 17,000 and 16,000 lives respectively in 2016, although in lethality they were surpassed by conflicts in Mexico and Central America, which have received much less attention from the media and the international community,'  

Mexico's 23,000 conflict-related deaths in 2016 marked an increase from 17,000 in 2015 and 15,000 in 2014. 

Mexico's National System for Public Security has counted homicides for the last 20 years, and May 2017 was its worst month on record. The survey found that 2,186 people were murdered nationwide last month.  There were 9,916 killings in Mexico during the first five months of 2017, up about 30 percent from 7,638 during the same period in 2016. 

However, Mexico's foreign ministry has replied to Trump's tweet, releasing a statement denying it's the second most violence nation in the world. 'While Mexico does have a significant problem of violence, Mexico is NOT the second most violent nation in the world.  'According to UN figures for 2014 (the most recent international report), Mexico is far from being one of the most violent countries. In Latin America alone, countries such as Honduras, Venezuela, Belize, Colombia and Brazil had homicide rates of 90.4, 53.7, 44.7, 30.8 and 25.2, respectively, per 100,000 inhabitants, while Mexico had a rate of 16.4, well below many of the countries in the region'.