Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) issued a report finding that 5,397 have been reported missing across the country since President Felipe Calderón launched his war on the drug cartels in 2006. The CNDH analyzed data provided by relatives and by state authorities on cases of those "reported missing or absent." The commission said 3,457 of those disappeared were men and 1,885 women, while this data was unavailable in the remaining 55 cases. The figure includes ransom kidnappings, as well as migrants whose whereabouts are unknown. (BBC News, EFE, April 2)

Some 115,000 Mexicans fled their homes last year because of drug-related crime, according to a report released on March 23 by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). The Geneva-based group, which was established by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in 1998 at the United Nations' request, estimated that the total number of people displaced by drug violence in Mexico since 2007 has reached about 230,000. Some 35,000 people have died in fighting among drug gangs and between the gangs and the authorities in the four years since President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa militarized the fight against drug traffickers shortly after taking office in December 2006.

Mexico-US border police chiefs were at the top of the news in recent weeks. In a bitter twist to an almost fairytale story that captured the imagination of the US and Mexican press, the 20-year-old police chief of a small town in the blood-soaked Juárez Valley, Marisol Valles, fled to the US seeking political asylum in early March.
 Only days later, on March 10, US federal agents swept into the border town of Columbus, New Mexico, arresting Police Chief Angelo Vega along with the town's mayor and other suspects. Jailed in southern New Mexico on gun-running charges, the defendants are accused of engaging in the type of cross-border commerce that has reaped death and destruction in the Juárez Valley and other parts of Mexico during the past few years.

US secretary of state Hillary Clinton announced on March 19 that the US ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual, had resigned. Pascual, who has only been at the post for a year and five months, will remain in Mexico to organize an "orderly transition," Clinton said. Pascual's resignation came after a number of embarrassing revelations about US-Mexican relations, starting with the WikiLeaks group's publication of diplomatic cables from the US embassy in Mexico. Some cables showed US diplomats losing confidence in the militarized "war on drugs" that President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa ordered shortly after taking office in December 2006. Calderón made it clear during a visit to Washington on March 3 this year that he wanted Pascual replaced, but State Department officials said at the time that they had no plans to remove the ambassador. (La Jornada, Mexico, March 20)

Mexican social organizations and human rights groups carried out actions in at least eight states on March 8, International Women's Day, to demand that the authorities end the murders of women, categorize femicide as a special crime, and pay attention to women's demands.

On March 8, International Women's Day 2011, the voices of many prominent human rights defenders were absent from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Within the past 14 months, human rights campaigner Josefina Reyes, poet Susana Chávez and activist mother Marisela Escobedo all have been murdered, while Cipriana Jurado of the Worker Solidarity and Research Center (CISO) and Paula Flores have been forced to flee the city.

US president Barack Obama expressed strong support for Mexico's "war on drugs" during a joint press conference in Washington, DC on March 3 with Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinijosa. "I have nothing but admiration for President Calderón and his willingness to take this on," Obama said, referring to Calderón's militarization of the fight against drug trafficking since he took office in December 2006. Some 35,000 Mexicans have died in drug-related violence since then, and many Mexicans reject the militarization strategy.

Mexico's Foreign Relations Secretariat (SRE) said on March 5 that it had requested "detailed information" from the US government on Operation Fast and Furious, in which the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) reportedly allowed some 2,000 firearms to enter Mexico illegally in an effort to trace the activities of gun smugglers. The operation was said to be carried out without the knowledge of the Mexican government. (La Jornada, Mexico, March 6) Gun running from the US is considered a major source of weapons for drug cartels in Mexico, which has stricter gun control laws than several US states near the border.