(@CMDPDH)

On November 16th, President Enrique Peña Nieto (EPN) enacted the new General Law on Enforced Disappearances and Disappearances by Individuals and declared that “a legal framework or a set of public institutions dedicated specifically to providing a comprehensive response to this serious problem had never been established, with all the instruments of the State.” It should be remembered that Mexico has more than 30,000 disappeared.

In a private event at the Official Residence of Los Pinos, attended only by families of the Movement for Our Disappeared in Mexico, Peña Nieto said there will be a 60-day deadline to move towards the implementation of this legislation, and among other things, the creation of the National Search System that will lead the actions, and the establishment of the National Registry of Missing Persons. The Ministry of the Interior will have a budget of 186.3 million pesos by 2018 for the creation of the National Search Commission, the strengthening of the Mexico Platform and the operation of the National Forensic Bank.

The Movement for Our Disappeared affirmed that, “the enactment of this new Law is a sign of goodwill in the face of the magnitude of the crisis of disappearances and other violations of human rights and impunity in our country. However, families demand that the enactment have a clear route to implementation and have adequate and sufficient resources, beyond those currently allocated in the 2018 budget.”

It is worth mentioning that a survey on forced disappearance carried out by the Center for Social Studies and Public Opinion (CESOP in its Spanish acronym) of the Chamber of Deputies showed that most Mexicans classify actions searching for people as bad and the work of the government to punish cases of enforced disappearance as bad or very bad. However, 53.3% of the respondents were optimistic about the creation of the general law on forced disappearances.

For more information in Spanish:

Promulga Peña Ley de Desapariciones Forzadas (La Jornada, 16 de noviembre de 2017)

Familiares de víctimas exigen a Peña una implementación eficaz de la Ley de desaparecidos (Animal Político, 16 de noviembre de 2017)

Acciones por desaparición arrancan con 186.3 mdp (El Economista, 22 de noviembre de 2017)

For more information from SIPAZ:

Nacional: aprueban Ley de Desaparición forzada (17 de octubre de 2017)

México : Pronunciamientos y acciones en el marco del Día Internacional de las Víctimas de Desapariciones Forzadas (5 de septiembre de 2017)

Guerrero: Foro sobre desaparición forzada (22 de agosto de 2017)