Since the opening of PBI’s office in Chihuahua in 2013, we have established connections with various civil society organisations, including the Sierra Madre Alliance (Alianza Sierra Madre, A.C., ASMAC) which we have formally accompanied since 2018.
On 25 May 2019 PBI organised a meeting between representatives from the international community and organisations that are dedicated to the defence of land and territory rights in Mexico. Two organisations that PBI accompanies attended, Servicios para una Educación Alternativa A.C (EDUCA) from Oaxaca and the Alianza Sierra Madre A.C (ASMAC) from Chihuahua, as well as the Red de Defensores y Defensores Comunitarios de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (Redcom). Additionally, the Australian, Canadian, Spanish, British and Swiss embassies joined the discussion.
In July 2019, PBI accompanied the seventh revision of the Contingency Plan’s working tables, which is a preventive strategy. The report “Turning the Tide on Impunity”, published by WOLA and PBI, values this public policy as an advance of the Federal Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists.
In the north of the country, in the city of Chihuahua, you will find Uno de Siete Migrando (One Out of Seven Migrating) an organisation that provides advice and accompaniment to migrants, refugees and displaced people in the state of Chihuahua.
After two decades of struggle, the Rarámuri community of Choréachi in the Sierra Tarahumara mountain range achieved an important sentence in late 2018. The sentence dictates that the boundaries delineating their ancestral territory must be respected and that the logging permits that were illegally granted to a non-indigenous agrarian community, are invalid.
In a context of debates and proposals in Mexico around the conformation of a National Guard in charge of pubic security, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) published it´s sentence in the Alvarado Case on 28th November 2018, an emblematic case of forced disappearances caused by the context of militarisation, that happened in 2009 in the State of Chihuahua. An historic tragedy, this case tells of the various serious human rights issues in the country: forced disappearances, forced displacement, impunity and militarisation
In this month of January 2019 we commemorate for the second year in a row the anniversary of the killings of two indigenous Rarámuri leaders in the Sierra Tarahumara in the State of Chihuahua in the North of Mexico. Isidro Baldenegro Lóperz, killed on 15th Janurary 2017, was an environmental defender, particularly focused on illegal logging in the municipality of Guadalupe and Calvo. For a long time his work was backed up and recognised
On 30th August 2018 families and organisations, together with the Human Rights Centre Paso del Norte, took part in a memorial event for the victims of forced disappearance, in the centre of Ciudad Juárez (Chihuahua). Members of PBI Mexico were at their side, ensuring the human rights defeners of Paso del Norte were protected and to shed light on the topic of forced disappearance in the North of Mexico and the risk that the struggle for justice brings with it.