The book adds to scholarship on non-state actors and disappearances, and to incipient international legal scholarship on the issue of organised crime and international law. Moreover, the study on Mexico provides a richer understanding of challenges faced by practitioners ‘on the ground’ where OCGs commit human rights violations alongside, or in collusion with, state forces and against the backdrop of an overall failure of the state. The book may be of interest to a diverse audience, including legal scholars and practitioners, human rights scholars in fields such as political science, international relations, or socio-legal studies, as well as funders supporting the work of NGOs in Mexico and similar contexts, and NGOs themselves.
Lene Guercke is a senior researcher for the Investigations Program at UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center. She holds a PhD in Law from KU Leuven and an MA in Human Rights from University College London. For several years, she worked as an independent consultant and researcher on diverse human rights issues.