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Mexico Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission A Critical Assessment
HRW Index No.: B2001 February 13, 2008 Also available in 
Download PDF, 601 KB, 130 pgs Purchase online Download E-Book Mexico: Lost in Transition Bold Ambitions, Limited Results for Human Rights Under Fox This 150-page report documents the successes and failures of Fox’s human rights policies. The report offers detailed recommendations for his successor —who will be chosen in the July presidential election —on how to build upon the Fox agenda, while avoiding its significant shortcomings. May 17, 2006 Also available in
Download PDF, 744 KB, 158 pgs Purchase online Mexico: The Second Assault Obstructing Access to Legal Abortion after Rape in Mexico This 92-page report details the disrespect, suspicion and apathy that pregnant rape victims encounter from public prosecutors and health workers. The report also exposes continuing and pervasive impunity for rape and other forms of sexual violence in states throughout Mexico. HRW Index No.: B1801 March 7, 2006 Also available in
Download PDF, 486 KB, 94 pgs Purchase online Download E-Book Justice in Jeopardy Why Mexico’s First Real Effort To Address Past Abuses Risks Becoming Its Latest This 29-page report examines the shortcomings of the Special Prosecutor’s Office and concludes that its main problem has been the inadequate support it has received from the government. President Vicente Fox created the Special Prosecutor’s Office in November 2001 to investigate and prosecute human rights violations committed under previous governments. A year and half later, the office has yet to produce significant results, and there is discouraging evidence that it lacks the powers and resources necessary to manage the task it has been assigned. HRW Index No.: B1504 July 24, 2003 Also available in
Download PDF Purchase online Military Injustice: Mexico's Failure to Punish Army Abuses In this new report, Human Rights Watch called on Mexico to end military jurisdiction over all cases involving human rights violations. The Mexican justice system currently leaves the task of investigating and prosecuting army abuses to military authorities. Because of this arrangement, serious violations go unpunished. Mexico's army has played an increasingly active role in policing the Mexican countryside in recent years, especially in regions with large indigenous populations. Last January, President Vicente Fox declared his intention to wage a "war without quarter" against drug trafficking, raising concerns that aggressive policing practices by the armed forces could take insufficient account of the protection of human rights. 22pp, 3.00 HRW Index No.: (B1304) December 5, 2001 Also available in
Download PDF Purchase online Mexico: Child Soldiers Global Report 2001 From the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers There are indications of under-18s in the government armed forces as the minimum age for voluntary recruitment into the Armed Forces is only 16. There are also reports of under-18s being recruited by paramilitaries and armed groups. June 12, 2001 Canada/Mexico/United States -- Trading Away Rights: The Unfulfilled Promise On the eve of the Quebec summit of Western hemisphere leaders, Human Rights Watch called for the creation of an independent oversight agency to spur remedial action for workers' rights violations."Trading Away Rights: The Unfulfilled Promise of NAFTA's Labor Side Agreement," analyzes the twenty-three complaints filed under the accord since it came into force in 1994. The complaints allege systematic workers' rights violations in all three countries - fourteen in Mexico, seven in the United States, and two in Canada. HRW Index No.: B1302 April 1, 2001 Download PDF Purchase online Mexico: Landmine Monitor Report 2000 A leader in the movement to ban AP mines, Mexico signed the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty on 3 December 1997 and ratified on 9 June 1998, the seventeenth country to do so. Mexico has not enacted separate implementation legislation for the Mine Ban Treaty. Once the treaty was promulgated and published in the Official Federal Gazette on 21 August 1998, it became fully enforceable domestic law.252 In most cases, international agreements in Mexico are self-executing. In the national implementation measures section of Mexico's Article 7 transparency report, the steps described above are included. The treaty is considered as a Supreme Law in all the territory according to Article 133 of the Politic Constitution of the United Mexican States. August 1, 2000 Systemic Injustice: Torture, “Disappearance,” and Extrajudicial Execution in Mexico Torture, "disappearances," and extrajudicial executions remain widespread in Mexico, despitenumerous legal and institutional reforms adduced by successive Mexican governments asevidence of their commitment to protecting human rights. Indeed, reforms have taken place, butthey have failed to abate, much less resolve, these serious, seemingly intractable problems. Inpart, this is because political leaders have been unwilling to ensure that existing humanrights-related laws are applied vigorously; authorities are more likely to close ranks and deny thateven well-documented abuses ever took place than they are to insist that those responsible bebrought to justice. The problem, however, runs far deeper than official toleration of abuses andimpunity. Human rights violations also stem from the justice system's ineffective protection ofindividual guarantees and its lax approach to human rights abuses. Through willful ignorance ofabuses or purposeful fabrication of evidence, prosecutors routinely prosecute victims usingevidence obtained through human rights violations, including torture and illegal detention, andjudges avail themselves of permissive law and legal precedent to condemn victims while ignoringabuses. Faced with this deeply troubling reality, the Mexican government has opted to treathuman rights as an issue to be managed politically, countered with facile statistics, or handledthrough insufficient reforms or initiatives. HRW Index No.: ISBN 1-56432-198-3 January 1, 1999 Purchase online A Job or Your Rights: Continued Sex Discrimination in Mexico’s Maquiladora Sector In this report Human Rights Watch documents the Mexican government's failure to enforce its own labor laws in the export processing (maquiladora) sector. In violation of Mexican labor law, maquiladora operators oblige women to undergo pregnancy testing as a condition of work. Women thought to be pregnant are not hired. Among the corporations engaging in this practice, which violates both Mexican and international law, are such international corporations as Landis & Staefa, Samsung Group, Matsushita Electric Corp., Sunbeam-Oster, Sanyo, Thomson Corporate Worldwide, Siemens AG, and Pacific Dunlop. However, the vast majority of companies engaging in this practice are U.S.-owned, including Lear, Johnson Controls, and Tyco International. The Human Rights Watch report, "A Job or Your Rights: Continued Sex Discrimination in Mexico's Maquiladora Sector," documents how companies demand that women produce urine specimens for pregnancy exams and how maquiladora doctors and nurses examine women's abdomens or require them to reveal private information about menses schedule. December 1, 1998 Purchase online Implausible Deniability: State Responsibility for Rural Violence in Mexico Though Mexico grappled with political, economic, and legal reforms, it failed to focus much-needed attention on human rights violations. If the Zedillo administration was to end Mexico's longstanding abdications of its human rights obligations, it must place the protection of human rights squarely on its reform agenda; especially in Mexico's rural areas, where violent conflict led to widespread violations. Implausible Deniability examined the Mexican government's role in and responsibility for rural violence in several states, including Chiapas, Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Sinaloa. In many instances, private citizens, not government officials, carried out the assassinations, abductions, threats, and explulsions documented here. In others, Mexican government authorities participated directly. However, even when private citizens alone were involved, officials often facilitated their abusive acts, failed to prosecute the perpetrators, or appeared to use the judicial system to achieve partisan goals. Thus, the governments' role in attacks by private citizens was nothing short of willful negligence and complicity. HRW Index No.: ISBN 1-56432-210-6 April 1, 1997 Purchase online Labor Rights and NAFTA: A Case Study Mexico, the United States, and Canada broke new ground in January 1994 when they brought into force a labor rights side agreement to accompany the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Officially called the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC), the labor side accord exists to promote what the signatories termed their "resolve" to "protect, enhance and enforce basic workers' rights." Never before had labor rights standards been so explicitly included in the framework of a trade pact. While highly supportive of labor rights on paper, however, the new and largely untested accord provides weak mechanisms for ensuring their respect. September 1, 1996 No Guarantees Sex Discrimination in Mexico's Maquiladora Sector Maquiladoras, or export-processing factories, along the U.S.-Mexico border account for over US billion in export earnings for Mexico and employ over 500,000 workers. At least half of the Mexicans employed in this sector, mainly in assembly plants, are women, and the income they earn supports them and their families at wages higher than they could earn in any other employment sector in northern Mexico. These women workers routinely suffer a form of discrimination unique to women: the maquiladoras require them to undergo pregnancy testing as a condition of employment and deny them work if they are pregnant; if a woman becomes pregnant soon after gaining employment at a maquiladora, in some instances she may be mistreated or forced to resign because of her pregnancy. Maquiladora operators target women for discriminatory treatment, in violation of international human rights and labor rights norms. And despite its international and domestic legal responsibility to ensure protection for these workers, the Mexican government has done little to acknowledge or remedy violations of women's rights to nondiscrimination and to privacy. In addition, the Mexican government's failure to remedy discrimination in the maquiladoras infringes on women's right to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children. HRW Index No.: B806 August 1, 1996 Torture and Other Abuses During the 1995 Crackdown on Alleged Zapatistas In February 1995, Pres. Zedillo ordered a crackdown on the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN). As the Mexican army fought to regain territory in which the Zapatistas had operated since January 1994, federal and state police worked in tandem to arrest men and women accused of leading or supporting the Zapatistas. On February 8 and 9, officials detained more than 20 alleged EZLN members in three states and the Federal District. During the operation, they committed serious violations of Mexican and international human rights standards, including torture, the extraction of confessions by force, and the disregard of due-process guarantees. February 1, 1996 Army Officer Held "Responsible" for Chiapas Massacre: Accused Found Dead at Defense Ministry On April 8, 1995, senior Mexican army officers invited us to discuss the human rights situation in Chiapas and offered information on the internal investigations conducted by the army into several violent incidents of the 1994 Chiapas uprising of the Zapatista National Liberation Army and its suppression. From our conversations and from documents that we were permitted to copy, we learned important facts that had not been made public concerning the killings of 11 people during an army occupation of a public hospital in Ocosingo, Chiapas. June 1, 1995 Crossing the Line Human Rights Abuses Along the U.S. Border with Mexico Persist Amid Climate of Impunity U.S. Border Patrol agents are committing serious human rights violations, including unjustified shootings, rapes and beatings, while enjoying virtual impunity for their actions. In our third investigative report in as many years (see B504 & 0758), we cite continuing violations despite assurances received from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, following the publication of our May 1993 report, that the agency would address one of the worst police abuse problems in the country. Instead, the agency’s efforts have been limited, misguided and ineffective, as evidenced by the alarming number of new shootings and serious beatings we documented during the past year. HRW Index No.: B704 April 1, 1995 Mexico at the Crossroads: Political Rights and the 1994 Presidential and Congressional Elections Demands for an overhaul of the Mexican political system acquired renewed political force following an armed uprising by Indian peasants in the southern state of Chiapas on January 1, 1994. The fairness of these elections was a litmus test of the government’s willingness to achieve a genuinely representative democracy and give ordinary Mexicans the right to hold their representatives accountable. August 1, 1994 The New Year’s Rebellion: Violations of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law during the Armed Revolt in Chiapas, Mexico This report examines the underlying causes of the New Year’s Rebellion, the Mexican government’s two-phase response, and the most serious human rights and humanitarian law violations that occurred to date during the conflict. This report’s findings conclude that both the Mexican authorities and the Zapatista Army committed serious human rights violations; army sweeps of many towns and hamlets led to deaths and injuries of civilians; and many arrests by the army were made without warrants or probable cause. March 1, 1994 HRW Writes to President Clinton Urging NAFTA Summit on Human Rights Citing violations of core political rights in Mexico — freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, and the right to vote — this report calls for the Clinton administration to address these and other human rights issues as it engages the Mexican government in trade negotiations. October 1, 1993 Purchase online Frontier Injustice Human Rights Abuses Along the U.S. Border with Mexico Persist Amid Climate of Impunity A follow-up on human rights violations along the U.S. border with Mexico, this report concludes that serious abuses by U.S. immigration law enforcement agents continue and that current mechanisms intended to curtail abuses and discipline officers are woefully inadequate. HRW Index No.: B504 May 1, 1993 |
 
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