| 2016.01.26 CSOs main concerns on Mexico 2016 4 pages / 284 KB |

→ To take concrete actions to guarantee the independence of the judiciary and the specific training of judicial officers, ensuring that the prosecutions and investigations are carried out with impartiality and that direct as well as indirect perpetrators are duly prosecuted and convicted.
→ To strengthen the Federal Mechanism for the Protection of HRDs and Journalists and supply it with enough resources to ensure an effective protection, also including a gender- and ethnicity-based approach, ensuring the physical and psychological integrity of the HRDs and journalists under its protection.
→ To ensure that HRDs can safely carry out their duties within a national legislative framework that does not criminalize social protest and to guarantee the repeal of those laws restricting social protests, which were adopted for instance in the Federal District and Quintana Roo.
→ To raise more awareness about the legitimacy of the work of HRDs, by publicly supporting them through public declarations and campaigns recognizing their contribution to the rule of law and democracy.
→ The militarization of the institutions and the territory as part of a security strategy has a direct link with the increasing of violence and attacks against HRDs. A timetable should be adopted to remove the military from public security functions, in line with the recommendations of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
→ To include the highest international standards in the fight against torture with special focus on the definition of torture, the absolute prohibition of evidence obtained under torture, the correct implementation of the Istanbul Protocol, the end of impunity for perpetrators, the elimination of the concept of “arraigo” since it constitutes a form of arbitrary detention, the reform of the Military Code of Justice in line with the judgments of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, ensuring that human rights violations are an exclusive competence of the civil or ordinary jurisdiction, and the establishment of guarantees for an effective redress of victims.
→ To ensure that the General Law against Torture establishes the competence of the Federal Attorney General’s Office (Procuraduría General de la República) to investigate cases that have not been duly investigated by the State Attorney’s Offices.
→ To respect the time required by human rights organizations to coordinate themselves to provide commentaries on the draft law, rather than impose an “express process”. The State shall provide all necessary means to facilitate the effective participation of families, victims and the collectives representing them in the debates and the effective inclusion of their contributions to the law.
→ To incorporate the highest international standards in the fight against enforced or involuntarily disappearances and to guarantee its practical implementation effectively by different means, among which the creation of a specialized unity within the Attorney General’s Office.
→ To establish a national registry of disappeared persons gathering information on whether there are signs of intervention of the State’s security forces and to guarantee an efficient coordination at Federal and State level, which would allow to include all cases of enforced disappearances in a single comprehensive database.
→ The recent decision of the UN Committee against Torture condemning Mexico for the first time, after analyzing an individual complaint, shows the importance of opening the access to justice at international level in order to redress failures at national level. Against this background, Mexico should recognize the competence of the UN Committee against Enforced Disappearances to examine individual complaints.
→ To respect the time that human rights organizations may require to organize and coordinate themselves and avoid an “express process”. The State shall provide the necessary means to facilitate the effective participation of families, victims and the collectives representing them in the debates and the effective inclusion of their contributions to the Law.
→ To implement the recommendations of the GIEI.
→ To fulfill the agreements reached with the relatives of the 43 students.
→ To Guarantee the physical and psychological integrity of the relatives of the disappeared persons and of the human rights organizations and to investigate the aggressions perpetrated against them.
→ To ensure the active participation of civil society, including human rights organizations and victims' organizations.
→ To ensure that the EU Delegation and the representatives of DROI meet the families from Ayotzinapa.
→ To request the EU Delegation in Mexico to be more proactive in following up human rights issues in Mexico and publicly show the EU concerns.
→ To ensure that the EU is making progresses in its joint work with Mexico as agreed in the Human Rights Dialogue 2015, including the strengthening of the work on HRDs, torture and disappearances.
→ To organize a public debate in the European Parliament with the GIEI experts in 2016, providing MEPs with information on the case of Ayotzinapa and more generally on enforced disappearances in Mexico. This will represent a clear message on the EP’s commitment on this issue.
→ To promote the adoption of a new resolution as a follow-up to this Mission and to the resolution of the European Parliament from 2014.
| Tweet |
English
Spanish