Crime and peace International interventions to cope with rule of law challenges in Latin America

In 21st century Latin America, many countries face criminal violence on the scale of civil war. Whilst street gangs and drug traffickers defy the state’s monopoly on the use of force from below, high-level government corruption and human rights violations by state actors defy the legitimacy of the state from the inside. What the international community can do to assist states that face the simultaneous challenge of bottom-up and top-down rule of law undermining crime is the central question guiding this dissertation. This dissertation includes three in-depth case studies of Plan Colombia, the ICC preliminary investigation of Colombia, and the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG).