Emilio Godoy: Forced Disappearances Are Humanitarian Crisis in Mexico Emilio Godoy - Inter Press Service
go to original January 25, 2015

More than 500 people disappeared in the 1960s and 1970s during Mexico’s Dirty War between the government and left-wing student and guerilla groups. Their relatives, led by a group of mothers, created Museo Memoria Indómita memorial as a way to keep the memory of forced disappearances in Mexico alive. (ignaciovazqeuz)

The Mexican government will face close scrutiny from the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances – a phenomenon that made international headlines after 43 students from a rural teachers college were killed in September in Iguala, in a case that has not yet been fully clarified.

Twenty-six human rights organizations have sent the U.N. Committee 12 submissions on the problem of forced disappearance, one of the worst human rights issues facing this Latin American country, where at least 23,000 people are registered as missing, according to official figures that do not specify whether they are victims of forced disappearance.

The submissions, to which IPS had access, say forced disappearances have taken on the magnitude of a humanitarian crisis since December 2006, when then conservative president Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) declared the “war on drugs” – a situation that his predecessor, conservative President Enrique Peña Nieto, has not resolved.

The organizations say forced disappearance is not adequately classified as a crime in Mexican law. They also complain about the lack of effective mechanisms and protocols for searching for missing persons and for reparations for direct and indirect victims, the impunity surrounding these crimes, the lack of a unified database of victims, and problems with the investigations.

In addition, they criticize Mexico’s reluctance to accept the competence of the Committee on Enforced Disappearances to receive and analyze communications from the victims.

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