Unreported World

‘Young people, we can recruit fast. They’re the ones we can trick with drugs, with guns, with money.’

Children are being recruited as hitmen by Mexico’s cartels. Reporter Guillermo Galdos speaks to a cartel boss who has been involved in organised crime since the age of eight.

In some of Mexico’s poorest neighbourhoods, teenagers are being snatched and forced into rehab as Mexico struggles with a cartel-driven addiction crisis.

Once addicted to drugs, cartels recruit them as hitmen, forcing police to deal with armed children on the streets.

In Mexico’s cartel-dominated Juárez, children are being drawn into drug addiction before joining the criminal underworld.

Desperate families are turning to unregulated rehab clinics to save them from a lifetime of addiction and crime.

Hired hitmen are known as ‘Izinkabi’ in South Africa. They rarely talk about what they do, but we’ve tracked down a man who has agreed to speak.

Warning: this video contains distressing themes.

Johannesburg, South Africa: Where speaking out against corruption can be a death sentence.

WATCH 'South Africa's Whistleblower Hitmen' on YouTube now.

youtu.be/tXCZOOVL1Vg