With the news headlines dominated by violence in the middle east, the brutal violence in Mexico flew right under the radar in 2016.
Last year Mexico's drug wars claimed 23,000 lives, making it the second deadliest country in 2016. Syria was the deadliest, with 50,000 people dying in its civil war.
Anastasia Voronkova, the editor of the survey of armed conflict, said:
"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."
According to the survey, there were 17,000 deaths in Mexico in 2015 and 15,000 in 2014.
Voronkova added:
"It is noteworthy that the largest rises in fatalities were registered in states that were key battlegrounds for control between competing, increasingly fragmented cartels. The violence grew worse as the cartels expanded the territorial reach of their campaigns, seeking to 'cleanse' areas of rivals in their efforts to secure a monopoly on drug-trafficking routes and other criminal assets."