On 13 July 2017, the first roundtable discussions with regard to the Contingency Plan took place at the Chihuahua State Governor´s Office. The Plan is part of the early warning system for human rights defenders and journalists.
The UN Working Group on Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and other Business enterprises presented the report on their 2016 Mission to Mexico to the UN Human Rights Council (HRC).
According to an investigation by Citizen Lab, human rights defenders, high profile journalists and anti-corruption activists in Mexico may have been affected by “Pegasus”, a software which infiltrates mobile devices in order to monitor the movements of someone through their cell phone.
On 15 and 16 June the 4th annual Statewide Meeting of Women Activists and Human Rights Defenders took place in Oaxaca. The event was organized by Consorcio Oaxaca, an organization that receives PBI accompaniment and attended by 70 human rights defenders from different regions of the state of Oaxaca and Natalia Barreto – an Advisor for Human Rights Cooperation and Culture of the European Union Delegation in Mexico.
On 9 June, the Governor of the State of Chihuahua, Javier Corral, and the Under Secretary of Human Rights from the Secretary of the Interior, Roberto Campa Cifrian, signed the Contingency Plan which was created from the early warning system for the protection of human rights defenders and journalists in Chihuahua.
Civil Society Organizations in Chihauhua salute the passage of an integral reform of the Chihuhua State Prosecutor’s Office by the State Congress, which will include the creation of a Special Prosecutor for the Investigation of Human Rights Violations in the state.
Between 12 and 22 May, the Caravan in Search of the Disappeared Alive – made up of collectives from 25 cities and 12 states in Mexico and the US — took place in the municipalities of Torreon, Saltillo, Monclova, Allende and Piedras Negras, Coahuila.
According to the CNDH, in recent years the flow of migrants that transit through Mexico have increased, and migration patterns have become more complex. To respond to the needs of undocumented migrants that pass through the municipality of Chahuites, in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in 2014 the priest Alejandro Solalinde Guerra founded the Center for Attention and Humanitarian Aid for Migrants as an extension of the Brothers on the Path Migrant Shelter, in Ixtepec.
On 10 May, human rights defender and mother of a disappeared daughter Miriam Elizabeth Rodriquez Martinez was murdered in the state of Tamaulipas. May 10 is Mother’s Day in Mexico, and for the last 6 years on this date, family members of the disappeared in different parts of the country have carried out the “March for National Dignity: Mothers in Search of their Sons, Daughters, Truth, and Justice”.
In a recent opinion column, Jan Jarab, representative of the OHCHR in Mexico, analysed the security situation of journalists and HRDs in Mexico and characterized the first four months of 2017 as “chilling”, due to the murder of at least five journalists, two HRDs, and two guards assigned to protect beneficiaries of the National Protection Mechanism.