30 August marked the International Day of Victims of Forced Disappearance. According to oficial statistics, there are about thirty thousand disappeared people in Mexico, and this number could be much greater according to civil society organizations due to the lack of an adequate registry. In recognition of this date, the UN in Mexico launched a campaign to push for the recognition of the competency of the Committee on Forced Disappearance to receive and examine reports of forced disappearances.
This is one of the pieces that is missing from the International Convention for the Protection of All People from Forced Disappearance, which has already been ratified. Given this situation, collectives and organizations of relatives of disappeared people held a series of activities to commemorate these events and demand justice. One of these activities was an event in Chilpancingo, Guerrero, which brought together collectives of relatives of disappeared people from different states in the country and national and international human rights institutions and organizations. Tita Radilla, vice-president of the Association of Relatives of the Detained, Disappeared and Victims of Human Rights Violations in Mexico (AFADEM) attended the event.
Tita is the daughter of Rosendo Radilla Pacheco, who was disappeared 43 years ago and whose case received a sentence from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 2009, although several aspects of this sentence have not yet been carried out. The case is considered by human rights organizations as an important precedent, both in terms of the sentence itself and because it provides a context for the current disappearances in the state of Guerrero.