The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified trends of organized crime in Central America. As a result, the exacerbated challenges allowed organized criminal groups to exploit the gaps left by governments’ reallocation of resources. Tackling such a complex problem requires the coordinated efforts of many actors, including the private sector, academia, and civil society. 

On April 27, UNODC and the Government of Mexico launched the first-ever Pilot Initiative, which brought together representatives from government, civil society, academia and the private sector to identify areas for cooperation in the context of the implementation of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC) review process. One of the active participants of this initiative is the Mexico based NGO Observatorio Nacional Ciudadano (ONC), that for the last 13 years, has been doing research on security and justice issues, to help understand and provide insights about what is happening with security issues and organized crime in Mexico.  The organisation uses this information to make recommendations for better design and implementation of public policy to support the Government in understanding the best practices, the challenges and how to overcome them to make Mexico a safer place. Following their participation in the Pilot Initiative, Observatorio Nacional Ciudadano participated in the first Constructive Dialogues on Firearms and International Cooperation and Technical Assistance, which was organised by UNODC in Vienna on 6 May 2022. 

Back in 2009 and 2010, there was no centralized measuring of crimes in Mexico, and each of the 32 states was measuring crimes differently. There were no manuals or guides on how to measure crime, and how to understand the complexity of what was going on. The Observatorio Nacional Ciudadano led the organizing and systematizing of statistics data as well as the measuring of crime rates at local and national levels. In 2015 they started measuring what is happening with crime at the local level and to understand the difference between the crime rates across 32 states and 2456 municipalities in Mexico, they started working with authorities, which became a lengthy process. As a result of their work, many local attorneys started applying standard guidelines on crime investigations and understanding how to measure crime for practical purposes. In total 17 out of 32 states in Mexico changed their systems for crime investigations.  ONC has helped many victims of crime to begin legal processes with authorities and to better understand the steps to take for access to justice. The NGO has a national network of local observatories made up of 33 organisations. 

Leonel Fernandez Novelo stresses that there is often no feeling of community among the government representatives and that there is a lack of working together with other stakeholders. “Something really impactful happened to us was when we started working on the political part of relations between NGOs and authorities, both in the technical part with the public servants,” - says Novelo. “With time they understood that NGOs want to help them to make Mexico a better and safe place, and they stopped seeing us in a negative light. And it was insightful for us because it opened a different view on how NGOs and the Government can work together.”