Historic First: UN Committee Refers Mexico’s Issue of Enforced Disappearances to the UN General Assembly
UN General Assembly during Ban Ki Moon’s speech on 28 September 2015. Credits: UN/Loey Felipe. License.
For the very first time, the Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) activated article 34 of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED) and decided to formally refer the ongoing situation in Mexico to the United Nations General Assembly.
In its decision, the Committee indicated that there are well-founded evidence that enforced disappearances as crimes against humanity are currently being committed in Mexico.
This is the result of the investigative and documentation work conducted by Mexico-based civil society organization IDHEAS and the Comision Mexicana de Defensa y Promocion de los Derechos Humanos, in collaboration with the International Federation for Human Rights.
Justice Rapid Response (JRR) welcomes this decision and congratulates its local partner IDHEAS for this historic first. JRR is also proud to have provided since 2023 technical support to IDHEAS by strengthening its capacity to document, report and engage with international human rights mechanisms on cases of enforced disappearances and trafficking of women and girls in Mexico.
In the case at hand, JRR deployed a Legal Advisor who collaborated with IDHEAS to strengthen their capacity to interact with international human rights mechanisms within the UN system with the aim to maintain international attention on the situation of enforced disappearances in Mexico and their gendered dimensions.
Specifically, the JRR Expert supported IDHEAS in developing a new strategy to engage with key stakeholders involved in the ICPPED’s Article 34 process, which could activate the referral process to the UN General Assembly. This involved mapping UN actors, Member States and CSOs working on the issue of enforced disappearances, identifying entry points for engagement, and drafting the new strategy to engage with the UN General Assembly on the issue of enforced disappearances.
Bridging the expertise gap between local capacity of our partners and the requirements imposed by international standards linked to accountability and international justice work is at the heart of what we do, and we will continue doing so to promote the rights of victims and survivors and their access to justice.