• The Ministry of Foreign Affairs appeals against an order to recognize the jurisdiction of the UN and misses opportunity to keep proving its commitment to fighting the crisis of disappearances in Mexico
  • The Trujillo Herrera family, with the support of Center Prodh, files a legal remedy in favor of the order of the Judiciary.

Mexico City, March 19, 2019. On February 6, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE, by its Spanish acronym) filed a request for reconsideration against the order of the Third District Judge of the Administrative Court in Mexico City, which ordered the SRE to clarify its position, within 60 calendar days, on the recognition of the jurisdiction of the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) to receive individual cases. This would allow thousands of relatives of victims of enforced disappearance to bring their requests before this international body.

The order that the SRE appealed against is contained in the writ of indirect amparo 384/2018 issued in favor of María Herrera Magdaleno and Juan Carlos Trujillo Herrera, mother and brother of the disappeared victims Raúl, Salvador, Luis Armando, and Gustavo Trujillo Herrera.

Appealing against the order, the SRE argued that it invades the jurisdiction of the Executive branch and that it refers to a right that the SRE does not recognize: the right to access to international justice. In addition, according to the Ministry, the term granted in the order to complete the procedure to recognize the jurisdiction of the CED to receive individual cases is too short, among other matters.

With this request for reconsideration filed by the SRE, the Mexican government has missed an opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to human rights and international supervision. We regret that this innovative order, protective of human rights, has been rejected in the emblematic case of María Herrera, who is the mother of 4 disappeared victims and who has fought with dignity for over a decade without giving up in her search for truth and justice.

In this context, the Twentieth Collegiate Administrative Court of the First Circuit will have the last word on the procedure to recognize the jurisdiction of the CED and will issue a final decision on the arguments advanced by the SRE in its request for reconsideration 73/2019.

Center Prodh, involved in the proceedings as the legal representative of María Herrera and her son Juan Carlos Trujillo Herrera, filed a request for review in support of the order issued by the Judiciary. It highlighted the need to conduct the foreign policy of Mexico under the general duties of respect, promotion and guarantee of human rights and asserted that recognizing the jurisdiction of the CED is an appropriate and necessary mechanism for access to justice and truth for the families of the disappeared.

The recognition of the jurisdiction of the CED to receive individual cases is a longstanding demand of the organizations and collectives formed by the families of victims throughout the country. Mexico still has an opportunity to recognize the CED’s jurisdiction, as it announced in the presentation of the Plan for the Implementation of the General Law on Enforced Disappearance of Persons, as well as in its appearance before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, for the Universal Periodic Review.

In view of the above, we urge the SRE to support the recognition of the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances to receive individual cases from Mexico, in line with the current administration’s recognition of the major humanitarian crisis facing the country.