(Mexico City, March 30, 2026) – A draft bill to establish a care system in Mexico City risks undermining the rights of people with disabilities and older people due to structural shortcomings and a restrictive budget provision, Human Rights Watch said today.
The bill has been framed as an effort to align Mexico City with international human rights law, including the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. While the current proposal recognizes care as a human right and includes key principles such as autonomy, inclusion, and deinstitutionalization, it falls short on support for independent living and has significant gaps that may limit its alignment with human rights in practice. It relies on care centers and service-driven models, and lacks safeguards to ensure autonomy, informed choice, and control by people with disabilities and older people over their support systems.
“The bill has important positive elements, but its structure and financing restrictions risk limiting people’s ability to exercise their rights in practice,” said Carlos Ríos Espinosa, associate disability rights director at Human Rights Watch. “Without adequate funding, the system cannot move beyond formal recognition of rights to ensuring real support in people’s daily lives.”
The bill’s funding provisions are a particular concern, Human Rights Watch said. While article 78 requires a progressive budget that does not decrease in real terms, an interim provision that bars any spending increases means that the budget to carry out this law’s provisions can only increase if those allocations are taken away from other spending priorities.
This could make increases practically impossible, eviscerating the intent of article 78 and undermining a crucial pillar of the bill’s attempt to align with international human rights law. Adequate funding support will be essential to any serious effort to ensure respect for the right to live independently and be included in the community under article 19 of the international treaty, for example.
The bill includes provisions for services for people with disabilities and older people, as well as the creation of care centers and certain social assistance programs, such as day care centers for older people. However, its overall design remains focused on providing services, and it does not do enough to establish a comprehensive system of individualized support that would enable people to live independently and participate in the community.
The budget restriction seems incompatible with any meaningful effort to realize key components of the right to independent living, including personal assistance, community-based support, and efforts to transition away from institutional care. Without sustained investment, these elements are unlikely to be developed at the scale required, limiting people’s ability to choose where and with whom they live.
The bill’s approach to the critical issue of financial support for people with disabilities also raises substantive concerns. While it would provide cash transfers to caregivers, it does not clearly allocate direct resources for people with disabilities to secure personal assistance or ensure social security coverage for those workers, as proposed by the Care Yes, Supports Too coalition of organizations of people with disabilities. This risks reinforcing dependence on families, contrary to the goal of autonomy.
Human Rights Watch has documented cases in Mexico City in which a lack of independent living support exposes people with disabilities to domestic violence and entrenches dependency, increasing the risks of neglect and abandonment. These situations often arise when people must rely on unstable, insufficient, or abusive family or informal arrangements.
“A provision that bars budget expansion in future fiscal years raises serious concerns about whether the government can meet its obligation to take steps commensurate with maximum available resources to realize economic, social, and cultural rights,” Ríos Espinosa said. “It also creates a real risk that the system will be implemented in a limited or fragmented way, leaving many people without the support they are entitled to.”
There are also concerns about other aspects of the bill, Human Rights Watch said, including the lack of a clear strategy for deinstitutionalization and the use of eligibility criteria that may exclude people who need support but do not meet the threshold of “intensive” needs, as described in the bill.
Lawmakers should remove the budget cap to ensure that funding can expand in line with needs and prioritize investment in community-based support and personal assistance consistent with article 19 of the international treaty, Human Rights Watch said.
“This law could be transformative but only if it is backed by adequate resources and a rights-aligned framework,” Ríos Espinosa said. “A care system without adequate funding risks becoming an empty promise rather than a tool for advancing rights and independence.”
