UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances publishes report on Mexico country visit

• The CED committee thanked the Mexican government for its support and openness during the constructive trip. The committee emphasized the challenges facing the country and the willingness of the current administration to address them.
• The two-part report contains 85 recommendations, including the need to adopt a national policy to prevent and eradicate enforced disappearances and the minimum conditions for this to be effective.
• The Interior Ministry will be in charge of coordinating efforts to work on a strategy to address the recommendations.

Today, the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) published its report on its country visit to Mexico from November 15-26, 2021. The visit was a sign of Mexico's commitment to promoting and protecting human rights, and its openness to constructive dialogue and international cooperation.

While in Mexico, the CED delegation held meetings with 88 authorities and visited 13 states: Chihuahua, Mexico City, Coahuila, Mexico State, Guanajuato, Guerrero, Jalisco, Morelos, Nayarit, Nuevo León, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas and Veracruz. In addition to holding meetings with senior state authorities, they met with groups of victims and carried out search activities in the field.

In its report, the CED committee thanked the Mexican government for its support and openness during the constructive trip. The committee also emphasized the challenges facing the country and the willingness of the current administration to address them.

The two-part report contains 85 recommendations that include the need to: implement a national policy to prevent and eradicate enforced disappearances, the priorities for addressing this policy and the minimum conditions for it to be efficient and effective; strengthen national institutions and the search and investigation processes; ensure systematic and effective coordination of all institutions involved in the process of search, investigation, reparation and accompaniment of victims; remove obstacles to prosecutions; address the forensic crisis; and to recognize the role of victims, among other things.

The committee recognized the important legislative, institutional and judicial advances in Mexico, such as adoption of the General Law on Enforced Disappearance of Persons, Disappearance Committed by Private Individuals and the National Missing Persons Search System; the General Law on Victims; creation of the National Register of Disappeared and Missing Persons; reactivation of the National Search System; creation of local search commissions and Special Prosecutor's Offices for investigating enforced disappearances; adoption of the Homologated Search Protocol for Disappeared and Missing Persons and the Additional Protocol for the Search for Children and Adolescents, and the possibility of including those involved in searches into the Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists.

The Mexican State appreciates the work of the committee and respectfully receives its recommendations with the commitment to implement them in good faith.  The Interior Ministry's Undersecretary for Human Rights will be in charge of coordinating the efforts to work on a strategy to address the CED recommendations.