A United Nations report to be released today provides the roadmap for a national human rights program in Mexico, Human Rights Watch said today.
The report, which contains dozens of detailed recommendations for the Mexican government, will be presented to President Vicente Fox by the representative of the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in a public ceremony in Mexico City.
“The U.N. report opens a window of opportunity for progress on human rights in Mexico,” said José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch. “It is the first comprehensive assessment of the full range of human rights problems in the country, and it has the backing of both the Mexican government and the United Nations.”
The report is the product of the technical cooperation agreement with the U.N. High Commissioner’s Office that President Fox signed on his first full day in office in December 2000. The second phase of this agreement, launched in July 2002, mandated the drafting of the report and stipulated that the Mexican government would develop a national human rights program based upon its recommendations.
The problems addressed in the report are chronic and often deeply rooted in the very institutions designed to address them. The justice system, for instance, for decades has failed to punish abusive state practices, such as the forced disappearances and political killings of the government’s “dirty war” against leftist activists in the 1970s. In some instances, the justice system even encourages abuses, such as by allowing law enforcement officials to get away with torturing criminal suspects.
The justice system has also failed to protect vulnerable populations from discrimination and violent crime. A dramatic example of this failure is the unsolved murders of hundreds of young women and girls over the last decade in Ciudad Juárez, a city on the U.S. border in Chihuahua state.
“It is crucial that the government use the report’s recommendations to craft a national agenda to tackle the country’s longstanding human rights problems,” said Vivanco.
