The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) rejected this Saturday, April 4, the conclusions of the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) regarding Mexico and stated that its decision to request the UN Secretary-General to urgently refer the Mexican case to the General Assembly is part of a biased, contradictory reading without historical or international perspective. Through an official bulletin, the autonomous body stated that the reading by international bodies did not consider key elements of the national context, nor institutional advances in the search for persons. The CNDH expressed its rejection of the UN's interpretation, considering that it presents a partial view of the situation of disappearances in Mexico. What did the CNDH say about the UN report on disappearances? In a statement, the CNDH affirmed that the committee based its decision on petitions from NGOs and family collectives, and questioned in particular that it had privileged, in its view, positions from organizations like Centro Prodh over the institutional, financial, and budgetary efforts deployed by the Mexican state in the last seven years. The body added that before an intervention of this nature, the national instances provided for in the international convention should have been exhausted first, and accused the CED of ignoring articles 30 and 31 of the treaty, relating to the conditions for its intervention. The CNDH also maintained that enforced disappearances as state policy correspond to the periods of the 'Dirty War,' between 1951 and 1990, and the so-called 'war on drugs,' between 2006 and 2012, while recent cases, it said, require ordering searches and strengthening the institutions in charge of locating victims. It accuses the UN of contradictions According to its position, the committee incurs a contradiction by stating on the one hand that there are not sufficient indications of a deliberate federal policy to disappear persons, and on the other, to conclude that these events occur in accordance with state or organizational policies. The commission also defended its performance by recalling that since 2023 it has warned of the partisan use of figures of disappeared persons and that in the current administration it has issued 14 recommendations for enforced disappearances regarding events from previous years and another five for recent cases, with files covering from 1958 to 2022 in states such as Morelos, Sinaloa, Durango, Guerrero, and Puebla. It rejected the proposal for technical cooperation, specialized assistance, financial support, and a special clarification mechanism, considering that it reproduces external formulas that, in its opinion, had not previously improved the human rights situation in the country. It also lashed out at the NGO that, it said, profits from and politicizes the issue. The Mexican government had already described the CED report as 'biased' and 'lacking legal rigor,' while Amnesty International celebrated the committee's decision, called for accepting international cooperation, and warned that the crisis affects more than 132,000 families.
