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About Center Prodh
Wednesday,
28
April
2010

 

Since its foundation by the Jesuits in 1988, the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center (Center Prodh) has worked to defend, promote and increase respect for human rights in Mexico. As a result of its efforts, inspired by close contact with victims and characterized by professionalism and a holistic perspective in defending and promoting human rights, Center Prodh has achieved: 

  • The successful defense of emblematic cases of human rights violations, including the liberation of numerous prisoners of conscience.
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  • The strengthening of human rights activists’ work in various regions of Mexico through trainings, workshops, and courses.
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  • Successful activism, litigation, and other participation before international bodies such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Inter-American Court of Human Rights, UN treaty bodies, and special mechanisms such as the UN Special Rapporteurs, as well as collaboration with NGOs such as Amnesty International, the Washington Office on Latin America, Human Rights Watch, the World Organisation Against Torture, the International Commission of Jurists, and the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), among others. 
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  • An active presence in various networks of Mexican human rights organizations and fruitful dialogue with academic and research bodies.
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  • Since September 2001, Center Prodh has held Consultative Status before the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.  We are also an Accredited Organization before the Organization of American States.
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Center Prodh's mission is to promote and defend the human rights of victims, especially those in situations of vulnerability and poverty, and to build a more just, equitable, and democratic society that fully respects human dignity.

Our vision is of a more just, equitable, and democratic society that fully respects all human rights.

 

Center Prodh’s day-to-day work includes the following programs of action:

Democratic Justice:  

  • Transitional Justice: addresses the problem of impunity and the obstacles to obtaining the right to truth for crimes of the past (that is, crimes committed during Mexico’s dirty war of the 1970s and 1980s). 
  • Citizen Security and Human Rights: proposes reforms to the public security system and defends the rights to physical and psychological integrity. 
  • Criminal Justice: through the defense of paradigmatic cases, seeks reforms to the legal framework in criminal justice to harmonize this framework with international standards of human rights, to guarantee swift and efficient justice, without cost, to individuals in Mexico.

ESC Rights: promotion and defense of economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights through paradigmatic cases of rights violations. The violation of these rights takes place within a framework of continuous violations of the rights to land and territory, the right to dignified housing, and civil and political rights, among others.

Promotion: Contribution to a culture of human rights has historically been part of Center Prodh’s work. We work to strengthen the capacities of civil society groups and social movements advocating for better conditions for the realization of their rights.