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The U.N. team of experts that formed the Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances Working Group in Mexico presented a report Tuesday saying they were extremely concerned with the “deteriorated situation” in the country.
“We are especially worried after confirming that the majority of the key recommendations the group made to the Mexican authorities in order to face and deal with structural problems regarding enforced disappearances have not been fully implemented,” the U.N. team said in their report.
The document was presented to the U.N.'s Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, and was based on a follow up of the recommendations the group made to the Mexican government after their visit to the country in March 2011.
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“The Mexican government has advanced very little in the implementation of the recommendations made to them,” the report adds.
“But, even more concerning to the working group is the deteriorated situation that prevails in Mexico since the group visited the country in 2011 and presented its report,” the statement says.
The experts agreed with a statement made in February by the Enforced Disappearances Committee of the United Nations, when they sustained that information gathered by the committee clearly illustrates a context in Mexico of widespread disappearances throughout the country, many of which can be described as enforced disappearances.
The group also noted inconsistencies and a lack of will within the different levels of the Mexican government to accept the true size of the problem of enforced disappearances.
“This lack of acceptance of the true dimension of the problem surfaced in its crudest form with the enforced disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students in Iguala, Guerrero, in September 2014,” the group states.
They added that equally concerning are the deficient ways in which investigations are carried out.
However, they said, despite being inefficient, the investigations revealed just how critical the situation of enforced disappearance is in Mexico as dozens of mass clandestine graves were discovered in various parts of the country.
The U.N. experts said the Mexican government has failed to carry out a national diagnosis of the problem and therefore there is no resources, information or correct knowledge of the grave situation so as to be able to develop efficient measures to prevent, eradicate, investigate, punish and repair the damages to victims.
The United Nations working group called on Mexican authorities to accept the competency of the Enforced Disappearances Committee to receive and examine information from individuals and government sources at all levels in order to be able to assist and protect all people from being disappeared.
They said this would be in accordance with the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearances.
Since President Enrique Peña Nieto took office in 2012, the number of enforced disappearances of human rights defenders has spiked from 53 to 81 during the previous government of President Felipe Calderon.
In 2014, 400 women disappeared in the state of Mexico, where Peña Nieto was governor before campaigning to be president.
The Mexican government recently reported that there were currently over 26,000 people reported as disappeared in the country. Mexico has also been condemned by the U.N. due to the widespread practice of torture by all levels of security forces. They also said 25,000 were disappeared in eight years.
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