Mexico

Status: Adopted (sub)national law or policy

Mexico has policies for the protection of human rights defenders (HRDs) at national and local level. However, the situation of HRDs in the country remains worrying, as Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for human rights defenders. In 2021, Mexico recorded the highest number of killings of environmental human rights defenders.

Mexico has serious human rights problems. Systemic attacks against journalists and HRDs, criminal violence, violations of migrants’ human rights and gender-based violence are some of the country’s troubling problems. The current Mexican government has made little progress in addressing systemic human rights violations in the country.

Concerning HRDs, in 2023, Mexico was the second country in the world with the highest killings of HRDs. HRDs who expose criminal cartels, criticize public officials and environmental HRDs are particularly at risk. According to the Mexican human rights group Comité Cerezo, Oaxaca is the state where the highest number of extrajudicial killings of HRDs take place and cases of violence against HRDs are scarcely investigated or prosecuted. The overall rate of enforced disappearances is also alarming in Mexico and stands as a risk for HRDs. Moreover, different NGOs have denounced the use of spyware to illegally spy on HRDs. A recent report by Amnesty International alerted for the risk of HRDs to be criminalized for their work in Mexico and exposed cases of surveillance of women HRDs by the Mexican authorities.

Mexico has multiple forms of legal protection for HRDs. You can find the comprehensive list of laws here.

At the national level, there exists a federal law that safeguards the protection of HRDs and journalists (Ley para la Protección de Personas Defensoras de Derechos Humanos y Periodistas), which was created in response to pressure by CSOs. This law was adopted in 2012 and establishes a mechanism for the protection of HRDs: the Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists (Mecanismo de Protección para Personas Defensoras de Derechos Humanos y Periodistas), which is made up of various government bodies and autonomous entities. This mechanism includes the participation in decision-making of civil society through its Advisory Council. Even though this mechanism has been a much valuable instrument, its capacities is limited due to a lack of interinstitutional coordination, lack of a preventive approach and inadequate human and financial resources.

In 2019, the Mexican Parliament proposed a draft law to respect, protect, guarantee and promote the rights of HRDs and journalists, which is currently pending before Congressional Committee. The draft law proposes a general protective law for HRDs that will oblige all States in Mexico to act according to this law. This would reach further than the current legislation, which proposes a general law for the protection of HRDs but does not oblige individual states to implement it and enforce it. However, both HRDs, civil society and journalists have some concerns about the law initiative, in particular that state bodies should take responsibility for their protection, as they have been, in most cases, the main aggressors.

The actual implementation of the 2012 national law depends on agreements with State governments. There are currently 28 states that have local legal protection for HRDs.

• Yucatán, Tabasco, Nuevo León and Baja California Sur do not have any legal protection for HRDs;
• Colima, Veracruz, Querétaro only offer protection to journalists;
• Sonora, Campeche, Chihuahua, Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Zacatecas have prosecutor agencies for HRDs, instead of specific laws;
• Tlaxcala, Tamaulipas, Puebla, Morelos, Michoacán, Jalisco, Estado de México, Durango have policies or laws to cooperate with the national/ federal protection mechanism;
• Aguascalientes, Baja California, Coahuila, Ciudad de México, Sinaloa, San Luis Potosí, Quintana Roo, Nayarit, Hidalgo, Guerrero, Guanajuato have individual sub-national laws for the protection of HRDs.

Most state laws and bodies currently lack the financial and human resources to function, and even the regulations to make them operational. In addition, besides the national law and the sub-national laws and policies, the right to defend human rights has been recognized by the Supreme Court of Mexico, protecting this rights under the Mexican Constitution.

The UN Special Rapporteur on HRDs monitors the situation of HRDs in Mexico. The last official visit of the UN Special Rapporteur to the country was in 2017. In the report of this visit, the then-Special Rapporteur, Michel Forst, flagged the high number of cases concerning the violation of the fundamental rights of HRDs and the continued impunity for these crimes (par. 9). Concerning the national protection mechanism, the Special Rapporteur noted that its implementation is slow and its procedures are excessively complicated  and therefore block HRDs’ access to protection and reparations (par. 10).

In 2019, the UN Human Rights Office in Mexico issued a diagnosis on the Protection Mechanism at the request of the Mexican State, which resulted in a series of recommendations. As of August 2022, the bodies that make up the Mechanism, together with the Espacio OSC and the Consultative Council, have set up a Working Group which will culminate at the end of the current six-year term of government, in September 2024. The objective of this group is to promote compliance with the recommendations through the design of routes and the strengthening of the Mechanism’s capacities.

At the regional level, the situation of HRDs in Mexico is monitored by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), and more specifically through the Rapporteurship on Human Rights Defenders and Justice Operators. The last country report on Mexico in 2015 contains a chapter on HRDs (p. 157). It describes the frequent attacks against HRDs across the country and lists precautionary measures taken by the Inter-American Commission to ensure the safety of certain individual HRDs.

Mexico is equally monitored through the Universal Periodic Review. The last review of Mexico was finalized in January 2024. Among the reports received, stakeholders, including the National Commission of Human Rights of Mexico (CNDH) and CSO represented by the EPUMX Collective, called on the national authorities to address the criminalization of HRDs and to adopt and implement a comprehensive policy for the protection of HRDs. The CNDH also called for the creation of a new protection mechanism for HRDs, since it considers the existing mechanism to be overloaded. Similarly, the working group recommended extensively the strengthening of the national protection mechanism for the protection of HRDs, among others.

Mexico is ranked by the Civicus monitor as “repressed”, which means that civic space is “significantly constrained” and is classified as “partly free” by the Freedom House democracy index. Concerns include influence of criminal groups in the country’s politics, high levels of violence, corruption in official institutions, lack of independence on the media, lack of freedom of NGOs and lack of independence on the judiciary.

[Updated on 02/08/2024]