Medellín, Colombia – Hundreds of Mexican human rights groups presented an open letter to United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, on Monday calling for action to combat forced disappearances.
The letter was signed by over 100 collectives representing disappeared people from Mexico and Central America, over 300 families of the missing, and various civil society organizations, shelters, and individuals.
According to the NGO Foundation for Justice and the Democratic Rule of Law (FJEDD), one of the signatories of the open letter, over 132,000 people are classed as missing in Mexico.
“Mexico requires independent mechanisms to establish the truth, locate the disappeared, conduct serious investigations and combat impunity, under the auspices of the United Nations,” said the FJEDD following their meeting with Türk.
They also called on the High Commissioner to raise the issue in his meeting with president Claudia Sheinbaum, and to urge the Mexican state to help affected families “achieve truth, justice, and reparations.”
The letter also requested that Türk back the recent decision by the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) to refer the crisis to the General Assembly, the organization’s highest authority.
When taking the “exceptional step” on April 2 to request that the situation be referred to the General Assembly, the CED also said that the 72,000 unidentified human remains found in 4,500 covert graves suggested the crisis could likely amount to crimes against humanity, something Mexico has since roundly rejected.
President of the CED, Juan Albán-Alencastro, said that “the magnitude, the pattern of the attacks and the fact that they are directed against the civilian population,” substantiated the view that the crisis meets the definition of crimes against humanity.
Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs repudiated the decision in a press release that argued that the UN had failed to recognize recent advances against the issue. President Sheinbaum also dismissed the CED’s claims, arguing that the data used was extrapolated and didn’t represent Mexico’s current situation.
In anticipation of her meeting with Türk this Wednesday, Sheinbaum also said that the official had come “to learn about the human rights system in Mexico, not just the issue of disappearances.”
Featured image: Maritza Ríos / Secretaría de Cultura de la Ciudad de México.
