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Mexico Fails To Solve Missing Persons Cases

Mexico’s human rights commission has failed to resolve cases of more than 20,000 people reported missing since 2005, according to El Proceso weekly news magazine. The commission doesn’t have much information on these cases at all. It has failed to keep track of basic information — age, gender, where they were last seen.

And according to El Proceso, the Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos (CNDH) has a bigger budget and higher salaries than similar agencies in other countries, including the European Union.

"We are processing the information," said a representative of the national ombudsman. 

Needless to say this is not very reassuring to the families of the disappeared.

Human rights organizations like Amnesty International have called the number of the unsolved disappearances a crisis and national scandal.

Amnesty’s Mexico investigator said many times families try to solve these cases on their own. Police often refuse to use their information, treating them with contempt.

"They are stigmatized, they are treated with disdain, and the typical thing is to say the victims were members of criminal gangs," said Rupert Knox, Amnesty International’s Mexico investigator. "That is a demonstration of the negligence that has allowed this problem to grow into a national scandal and a human rights crisis."

Laurel Morales was a Fronteras Desk senior field correspondent in Flagstaff from 2011 to 2020.