Mexico: AMLO Will Work With UN On Human Rights, Corruption

Mexico's President-Elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador says his administration will ask the United Nations for assistance to combat corruption and promote human rights.

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Tackling graft was one of Lopez Obrador's main campaign promises: he vowed to save the state millions of pesos by imposing zero-tolerance policies against corruption.

"The UN will aid us, they will support us through their transparency and combat of corruption office," Lopez Obrador told a press conference alongside Marcelo Ebrard, his future foreign affairs secretary.

Respect for human rights is another issue the president-elect said he intended to address with the help of the United Nations.

"We're interested in the UN's support to verify that our country will respect human rights, that no more violations of human rights will happen ever again, like the terrible, painful cases such as the disappearance of the young men from Ayotzinapa," said Lopez Obrador.

On September 26, 2014, a group of 43 students from the rural teachers' school of Ayotzinapa, in the southern state of Guerrero, were kidnapped by the local police of Iguala.

According to the official investigation, the students were then handed over to the 'Guerreros Unidos' drug cartel, which later murdered them, incinerated their bodies and threw the ashes into a river.

But the official account has long been disputed and the case has sparked national and international outrage, with Mexican authorities accused of covering up the truth.

The Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, along with a group of independent experts, carried out a parallel investigation that refuted the official investigation, but the results were dismissed by the Mexican government and the group was eventually expelled.

In the press conference, Lopez Obrador introduced as his future Ambassador to the United Nations Juan Ramon de la Fuente, a well-known pyschiatrist and scholar who has served as health minister and director of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The Senate has yet to ratify the appointment.

Lopez Obrador, also known by his initials AMLO, is due to be sworn in on December 1 after a landslide victory in the July 1 presidential elections. His party, the National Renewal Movement (Morena), also became the biggest political force in both legislative houses.