Mexico City, August 2010

While visiting Mexico from 4 to 7 August 2010, the United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Kyng-wha Kang, met with representatives of civil society organizations who submited to her consideration a brief report on some of the most pressing issues related to Human Rights in Mexico.

1. Human Rights defenders at risk
2. Constitutional reform of the criminal justice system in 2008
3. Public Security, militarization, extensive application of military jurisdiction
4. Economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights
5. Discrimination
6. Situation of migrants
7. Transitional justice  a lost agenda in Mexico

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Brief assessment of each topic

Human Rights defenders at risk:

Mexico should assume its obligations of protecting and guaranteeing the work conditions for human rights defenders, including punishing those responsible for attacks against the defenders. In the same way, the state should establish greater collaboration mechanisms with organisms of protection of human rights in the Universal and inter-American systems in order to strengthen international supervision in safeguarding the integrity of the human rights defenders;

Constitutional reform of the criminal justice system in 2008:

The criminal justice system that is currently being implemented in the federal and local levels should place at its core the respect and protections of human rights, correcting its multiple inadequacies in regards to international standards;

Public Security, militarization, extensive application of military jurisdiction and violence in the Northern border of the country:

Mexico should make effective the prohibition and the persecution of the crimes of forced disappearances, torture, and illegal or arbitrary detentions; eliminate the criminal justice mechanisms that allows this type of arbitrariness, such as the case of arraigo; including the measures that lead to the institutionalization of impunity, such as the extensive application of military jurisdiction to judge military officers that violate the human rights of civilians. In the same way, the state should end militarization in its territory as well as end militarization in the government positions that civil authorities should fill exclusively in a situation of democratic normality;

Economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights:

Mexico should assume the protection, guarantee, and universal promotion of these rights as part of a State policy that involve diverse sectors of society, including indigenous communities, worker ́s unions, and social organizations, and not as a State policy that does not respect human rights,

Discrimination:

Mexico should fulfill its obligation to prevent, prohibit and sanction every form of discrimination, a situation that becomes urgent due to the diversification, increase, and exacerbation of the manifestations of discrimination in Mexican society, particularly against women, indigenous communities, people with disabilities and the LGBTI community;

Situation of migrants:

Mexico should act in conformity with its discourse before the international community in regards to the treatment that migrants receive from authorities, independent of their origin, and implement a normative framework on the topic that adheres to the highest international standards;

Transitional justice: a lost agenda in Mexico;

Given that the regional democratic transition generated legitimate expectations of justice to the victims of crimes of the past, whose effects are present, Mexico has pending its obligation to investigate, sanction those responsible, and repair integrally the victims whose material and immaterial damages were caused by the repressive politics of the state in the seventies and eighties.

This Report was presented on August 5th by the organisations listed below:

Asistencia Legal por los Derechos Humanos A.C (AsiLegal)

Asociación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos y Víctimas de Violaciones a los Derechos Humanos en México, AFADEM-EDEFAM

Centro de Derechos Humanos de la Montaña “Tlachinollan”

Centro de Derechos Humanos “Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas”, A.C.

Centro de Derechos Humanos “Fray Francisco de Vitoria” OP. AC.

Centro de Derechos Humanos "Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez" (Centro Prodh)

Centro de Derechos Humanos “Juan Gerardi”

Centro Diocesano para los Derechos Humanos “Fray Juan de Larios”

Centro Mexicano de Derecho Ambiental, A.C. (CEMDA)

Centro de Reflexión y Acción Laboral (CEREAL)

Centro Regional de Derechos Humanos "Bartolomé Carrasco"

Coalición Internacional para el Hábitat,

Oficina para América Latin Comisión de Derechos Humanos y Laborales del Valle de Tehuacan

Comisión Mexicana de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos (CMDPDH)

Espacio DESC Frontera con Justicia, A.C.

Fundación Diego Lucero, A.C.

Humanidad Sin Fronteras, A.C.

Indignación, Promoción y Defensa de los Derechos Humanos, A.C.

Instituto Mexicano de Derechos Humanos y Democracia (IMDHD)

Instituto Mexicano para el Desarrollo Comunitario (IMDEC)

Movimiento Ciudadano por la Justicia 5 de Junio A.C.

Nacidos en la Tempestad, A.C.

Organización Familia Pasta de Conchos

Red Nacional de Organismos Civiles de Derechos Humanos “Todos los Derechos para Todas y Todos”