Most of these complaints were against authorities in the Prosecutor Generals Office, National Guard, Interior Secretariat, and the armed forces. The law prohibits the worst forms of child labor. During the electoral process the INE received 147 complaints of gender-based political violence, a significant increase from the 47 complaints it received during the 2017-2018 electoral process. Write by: . According to the National Womens Institute, the federal institution charged with directing national policy on equal opportunity for men and women, sexual harassment in the workplace was a significant problem. Organized criminal groups were implicated in numerous killings, acting with impunity and at times in collusion with corrupt federal, state, local, and security officials. The government increased efforts to target human smuggling organizations. Some civil society groups, however, asserted that state commissions were subservient to the state executive branch. U.S. Department of State - United States Department of State See the Department of States International Religious Freedom Report at https://www.state.gov/religiousfreedomreport/. Institutionalized persons with disabilities often lacked adequate medical care and rehabilitation services, privacy, and clothing; they often ate, slept, and bathed in unhygienic conditions. In June authorities sentenced Quintana Roo police officer Miguel Mora Olvera to five years in prison for his role in torturing Cacho. Members of the Mayan community in Campeche reported the National Tourism Board pressured them to cease protesting and agree to leave their lands. Ramos had been searching for her missing husband for the previous seven months as a member of two search collectives. NGOs reported that acts of excessive use of force and arbitrary detention occurred against female protesters, especially those protesting gender-based violence. In rural areas in 2019, the cause of most maternal deaths was obstetric hemorrhage. International Child Abductions: The country is party to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. Lozoya accused high-level politicians representing multiple parties of complicity in his corrupt acts and was acting as a states witness in trials against them. In February 2020, it called on El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico to protect the rights of migrants and refugees to leave their country of origin, noting that asylum applications from . Impunity and extremely low rates of prosecution remained a problem for all crimes, including human rights abuses and corruption. The State Department's Mexico Crime and Safety Report for Merida (OSAC) details that there is very little to no narco-related crime threat in Merida. The law provides for the right of indigenous persons to elect representatives to local office according to uses and customs law (see section 6, Indigenous Peoples) rather than federal and state electoral law. As of September authorities made no arrests regarding the 2020 killing of prominent indigenous and environmental rights defender Homero Gomez. Mexico has relied heavily on the military to control drugs and fight organized crime, leading to widespread human rights violations. Outsourcing practices made it difficult for workers to identify their legally registered employer, thus limiting their ability to seek redress of labor grievances. You can add more than one country or area. An opinion poll in April 2019 showed more than 70 percent of the population supporting the CICIG. State and federal prosecutors are independent of the executive branch and have the final authority to investigate and prosecute security force abuses. The most common aggressions were intimidation and harassment, followed by threats and physical attacks, according to civil society groups. The government increased the CNB budget 8 percent over the 2020 budget. Public buildings and facilities often did not comply with the law requiring access for persons with disabilities. February 27, 2023 alexandra bonefas scott No Comments . According to the measurement, which offers a balance for 2020, the capital of Potos has a rate of 37,400 victims per 100,000 inhabitants, only below Toluca, capital of the State of Mexico, with 38,300. Impunity for torture was prevalent among the security forces. INEGI reported that 2 percent of the population (2.5 million) self-identified as Afro-Mexican. There were some complaints of illegal searches or illegal destruction of private property. According to several NGOs and unions, many workers faced violence and intimidation perpetrated by protection union leaders and employers supporting them, as well as other workers, union leaders, and vigilantes hired by a company to suppress opposition to an existing union in bargaining-rights elections. Informal Sector: According to INEGI informal workers represented 56 percent of total workers in the country as of the second quarter of the year. Authorities held some detainees under house arrest. The NGO also reported the existence of multiple unregistered private institutions without licenses operating as orphanages. The procedure known in Spanish as arraigo (a constitutionally permitted form of pretrial detention employed during the investigative phase of a criminal case before probable cause is fully established) allows, with a judges approval, for certain suspects to be detained prior to filing formal charges. Many workers were compelled into forced labor through debt bondage, threats of violence, and nonpayment of wages by recruiters and employers. In June the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision confirming that the exercise of the right to strike suspends the processing of collective conflicts of an economic nature that may be pending before the court and the topics that they present, unless the workers express in writing their agreement to submit the conflict to the decision of the court. Here then is a recap of key crime and anti-crime events and developments in Mexico in 2020, and of the bleak prospects for 2021. There were several reports that government entities or their agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings, often with impunity. After denying they existed, in 2019 the Prosecutor Generals Office provided evidence of Pegasus licensing contracts in 2016 and 2017. In July Public Safety Secretary Rosa Isela Rodriguez revealed that the Felipe Calderon and Enrique Pena Nieto administrations signed 31 contracts for $61 million to buy Pegasus spy software. Impunity largely prevailed on this issue, with just 35 convictions for the crime of . Coordinator for the Arctic Region, Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, Office of International Religious Freedom, Office of the Special Envoy To Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment, Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, Office of the Science and Technology Adviser, Bureau of the Comptroller and Global Financial Services, Bureau of Information Resource Management, Office of Management Strategy and Solutions, Bureau of International Organization Affairs, Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, U.S. The reforms also establish an expedited and more transparent judicial process for unions to obtain collective bargaining rights. Abuses of time limits on pretrial detention were endemic in state judicial systems. There is no single independent oversight mechanism to review police actions, but many federal and state security and justice sector institutions have internal affairs units providing internal supervision and promoting best practices for transparency and accountability. Of all children, 7.1 percent, or two million, were younger than the minimum age of work or worked under conditions that violated federal labor law, such as performing hazardous work. On February 19, a constitutional reform eliminated presidential immunity for corruption and other crimes. As of September no alleged perpetrators of the disappearances had been convicted, and 78 of those initially accused were released due to lack of evidence, generally due to irregularities in their detention, including confessions obtained through torture. The UN Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) documented cases in the states of Mexico and Chiapas in which detainees remained in pretrial detention for more than 12 years. Between January and April the Office of the Special Prosecutor for Electoral Crimes in the Attorney Generals Office initiated 14 investigations related to gender-based political violence against women. The presidential cabinet had 19 secretariats, and as of August women headed seven. A 2019 constitutional reform increased the number of crimes for which pretrial detention is mandatory and bail is not available, including armed robbery, electoral crimes, fuel theft, and weapons possession. Most indigenous persons lived in marginalized communities, and the COVID-19 pandemic disproportionally affected these communities, according to the OHCHR. TYT.-. The governments National Council of Norms and Labor Competencies certified law enforcement internal affairs investigators and created standard internal affairs training to promote transparency and accountability. Some companies reportedly did not implement effective protective measures for employees, and one factory, owned by Eaton Corporation in Baja California, was operating illegally and was closed after it placed chains on its doors to prevent 800 workers from leaving. Wages were illegally withheld until the end of the harvest to ensure that the workers did not leave. Across the criminal justice system, many actors lacked the necessary training and capacity to carry out their duties fairly and consistently in line with the principle of equal justice. By law the government collected biometric data from migrants. The National Guard and state and municipal police are responsible for enforcing the law and maintaining order. There were repeated reports of excessive use of force by police officials when detaining people or policing protests and by members of the National Migration Institute (INM) and the National Guard against migrants. Abuse of Migrants and Refugees: The press, international organizations, and NGOs reported targeting and victimization of migrants by criminal groups and in some cases by police, immigration officers, and customs officials, including at land borders and airports. Forced labor persisted in the domestic service and in child-care, manufacturing, mining, food-processing, construction, tourism, begging, street-vending, leather-goods-production, and agriculture sectors, especially in the production of chili peppers and tomatoes. The Prosecutor Generals Office also obtained an arrest warrant against Lozoyas mother for money laundering, and in 2019 Interpol agents arrested her in Germany. In June another priest died in a cartel crossfire on the Durango-Zacatecas border. Global AIDS Coordinator and Global Health Diplomacy, Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, Special Representative for Syria Engagement, U.S. Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Office of the U.S. The current U.S. Department of State Travel Advisory at the date of this report's publication assesses Peru at Level 2, showing travelers should exercise increased caution. Mexico has relied heavily on the military for drug control and to fight organized crime, leading to widespread human rights violations. Penalties were commensurate with other similar laws but were rarely enforced. Governmental Posture Towards International and Nongovernmental Investigation of Alleged Abuses of Human Rights, Section 6. Despite these prohibitions, there were reports of security forces torturing suspects. Minors were recruited or forced by cartels to traffic persons, drugs, or other goods across the border with the United States. The law requires children younger than 18 to complete compulsory basic education and to have a medical certificate to work. Government officials were mostly cooperative and responsive, with the president and cabinet officials meeting with human rights organizations, such as OHCHR, IACHR, and CNDH. Nonetheless, discrimination was common against racial and ethnic minorities, including Black, Afro-Mexican, and indigenous groups. The state search commission paused all search efforts between May and June due to increased levels of insecurity for family search collectives, according to civil society groups. 21 Feb. osac mexico 2020 crime and safety report. The government deployed hundreds of security forces to contain the caravan. The new vote took place on August 17-18, and a majority of workers rejected the collective bargaining agreement. According to NGOs, however, the state search committees often lacked the capacity to fulfill their mandate. In May in Chicoloapan, state of Mexico, municipal police beat and detained supporters of feminist groups as they led a protest against gender-based violence and political parties. The CNDHs 2020 National Diagnostic of Penitentiary Supervision reported that state prisons were understaffed and suffered from poor sanitary conditions as well as a lack of separation between those sentenced and those awaiting trial. On July 21, Merida, Yucatan, municipal police detained Jose Eduardo Ravelo Echeverria. In May 2020 a constitutional amendment established the disability pension as a constitutional right, prioritizing children, indigenous, and Afro-Mexican persons with disabilities younger than age 64 who lived in poverty. According to a 2017 INEGI survey, the most recent information available, 12 percent of women were illegally asked to take a pregnancy test as a prerequisite to being hired. The education system provided education for students with disabilities nationwide. This requirement was not followed in all cases, particularly in remote areas of the country. As of August 16, authorities had not arrested any suspects. The NGO Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights identified 15 incidents between January and July of mass forced internal displacement (defined as the displacement of at least 10 families or 50 individuals) due to violence. Between January 1 and August 4, it received 4,119 reports of missing persons and located 3,805 alive and 277 deceased. The reforms prevent the registration of collective bargaining agreements known as protection contracts, which nonrepresentative unions often negotiated and signed without the knowledge of workers and undermined genuine collective bargaining. Organized criminal groups dominated migrant smuggling operations and often kidnapped, threatened, and extorted migrants to pay a fee for facilitating northbound travel. If you are traveling for university-related purposes to an area on the University Travel Warning List, you need to follow the instructions below to gain university approval. osac crime and safety reports osac crime and safety reports. Women were more likely to experience discrimination in wages, working hours, and benefits. Twelve states have laws restricting public demonstrations. Nevertheless, women nationwide faced obstacles to accessing emergency services due to health providers personal objections to emergency contraception or misunderstanding of their legal obligations to provide services. car accident in brooklyn today belt parkway. Although authorities generally maintained effective control over the security forces, there were instances in which security force elements acted independently of civilian control. osac mexico 2020 crime and safety report osac mexico 2020 crime and safety report. Libel/Slander Laws: There are no federal criminal laws against defamation, libel, or slander; however, eight states have criminal laws on these acts. Federal law prohibits discrimination against LGBTQI+ individuals. Calls included reports of relationship aggression, sexual assault, sexual harassment, rape, and intrafamily violence. The report noted 40 state prisons experienced overcrowding. Many companies evaded taxes and social security payments by employing workers through subcontracting regimes or by submitting falsified payroll records to the Mexican Social Security Institute. The filtering tool offers the user the ability to fully customize the app and . Digital media journalists covering stories such as crime, corruption, and human rights violations experienced physical violence and online abuse. NGOs reported authorities had not implemented programs for community integration. By law a union may call for a strike or bargain collectively in accordance with its own statutes. State preventive police report to state governors, while municipal police report to mayors. In March 2020 a federal judge issued an arrest warrant for Zeron on charges related to his conduct of the investigation, including torturing alleged perpetrators to force confessions, conducting forced disappearances, altering the crime scene, manipulating evidence, and failing to perform his duties. Government failures to investigate and prosecute attacks on protesters and human rights defenders resulted in impunity for these crimes, consistent with high impunity rates for all crimes. As of July 13, a total of 3,501 prisoners had contracted COVID-19 and 75,162 had received vaccines, according to the CNDH. As of August 16, the suspects remained in detention awaiting trial. According to labor rights NGOs, employers in all sectors sometimes used the illegal hours bank approach requiring long hours when the workload is heavy and cutting down hours when it is light to avoid compensating workers for overtime. State human rights commissions investigate state and municipal police forces and can issue similar recommendations. Arbitrary Arrest: Allegations of arbitrary detentions persisted throughout the year. The CNDH headquarters are located in Mexico City. As of October the Special Unit for the Investigation and Litigation of the Ayotzinapa case had arrested more than 80 suspects, including army captain Jose Martinez Crespo, an Iguala municipal police officer, and the Iguala municipal police chief. 5 Memoria is a project that belongs to the Justice in Mexico program at the University of San Diego. State search collectives reported being victims, at times fatal, of attacks, threats, and other acts of harassment. Federal and state databases were incomplete and had data-crossing problems; forensic systems were highly fragmented between the local, state, and federal levels; and the sheer volume of unsolved cases was far greater than the forensic systems were capable of handling. Federal law prohibits torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, as well as the admission of confessions obtained through illicit means as evidence in court. Federal law specifically proscribes discrimination based on ethnicity, nationality, gender, age, disability, social status, health, religion, immigration status, political opinion, sexual preference, marital status, or pregnancy. Violence and Harassment: Journalists were killed or subjected to physical and cyberattacks, harassment, and intimidation (especially by state agents and transnational criminal organizations) in response to their reporting. osac mexico 2020 crime and safety report. Reproductive Rights: There were no confirmed reports of coerced abortion or involuntary sterilization on the part of government authorities. Posted at 01:41h . In August the Mexico City congress approved a reform allowing LGBTQI+ children ages 12 years and older to legally change their gender on their birth certificate. The Federal Center, however, estimated that only 10 to 15 percent of those collective bargaining agreements would undergo a legitimization vote because the worksite where the agreement was valid had closed, the work for which the agreement was negotiated had concluded, or the contract was a protection contract held by a nonrepresentative union. In July the Sonora State Prosecutor Generals Office detained Rojos alleged killer. To receive government recognition, unions and their leaders must file for registration with the Federal Center. The government did not restrict or disrupt access to the internet or block or filter online content. NGOs alleged that provisions in laws threatened the privacy of internet users by forcing telecommunication companies to retain data for two years, providing real-time geolocation data to police, and allowing authorities to obtain metadata from private communications companies without a court order. Between September 2020 and June, the STPS reported conducting labor inspections in 22,350 work centers nationwide benefiting more than three million workers. Women tended to earn substantially less than men did for the same work. The STPS certification of the new election set November 3 as the date for termination of the existing agreement, thus establishing that representation rights would be determined under the new labor reform rules and institutions. In 2019 legislators passed a constitutional reform recognizing Afro-Mexicans as an ethnic group. osac mexico 2021 crime and safety report. The CABs operate under a tripartite system with government, worker, and employer representatives, with worker representation on the CABs selected based on majority representation, which was held by entrenched nondemocratic unions that sign protection contracts with complicit employers to secure low wages. The most common reason to remove content was defamation, followed by privacy and security. By law workers may remove themselves from situations that endanger health or safety without jeopardy to their employment. From January to June, the CNDH received nine complaints accusing government agents of forced disappearances, including five against the army and four against the National Guard. The government worked with UNHCR to improve access to refugee status and the procedure to determine refugee status, reception conditions for vulnerable migrants and refugee applicants, and integration in local communities (including access to school, work, and other social services) for those approved for refugee and complementary protection status. Drug traffickers involved in illegal logging recruited and kidnapped indigenous persons and children in isolated or displaced communities, withheld their wages, forced them to conduct illicit activities, and often threatened death if they tried to leave. The 45,000-person Jewish community experienced low levels of anti-Semitism. In June media outlets reported that a fight between two rival groups of inmates left six inmates dead and nine wounded at a prison in Villahermosa, Tabasco. OSAC has developed into an enormously successful joint venture, with U.S. companies and organizations receiving the tools they need to cope with security issues in a . From 2014 through 2019, the CNDH received nearly 3,000 . Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and family members of disappeared persons alleged the prosecutors undercounted the actual number of cases. As of December 2020 the Prosecutor Generals Office was investigating 3,703 torture-related inquiries under the previous inquisitorial legal system (initiated prior to the 2016 transition to an accusatorial system) and 565 investigations under the accusatorial system. As of August 18, authorities had not confirmed whether the threatening video was genuine. Journalists in Iguala, Guerrero, received anonymous messages through social networks, such as Facebook and WhatsApp, threatening them and their families, according to civil society. Several indigenous communities brought legal actions to oppose the construction, many of which were dismissed or denied. According to civil society, libel and defamation proceedings tripled from 11 cases in 2019 to 33 cases in 2020. Several outbreaks of COVID-19 resulted in multiple deaths. The government continued implementing the labor reforms in a phased manner, with the reform coming online in eight states in November 2020, and phase two started on November 3 with 13 states, and phase three to be concluded on May 1, 2022, for the remaining states. The government did not enforce the law effectively. The government has an established procedure for determining refugee status and providing protections. Reconsider travel to El Salvador due to crime.. Country Summary: Violent crime, including armed robbery, homicide and sexual assault are of concern throughout significant portions of the country.Although gang activity varies among departamentos (states) and municipios (municipalities), areas witnessing higher crime rates are often . > INDUSTRY REPORTING: Expert staff research issues affecting the private . There were reports of numerous forced disappearances by organized crime groups, sometimes with allegations of state collusion with authorities. Government authorities also reported an increase of 73 percent in online child pornography distribution during the pandemic. In addition to the outstanding Zeron arrest warrant, the Special Unit for the Investigation and Litigation of the Ayotzinapa case issued 12 warrants and made 10 arrests for investigative irregularities, such as torture and obstruction of justice. Various news outlets showed a video of two National Migration Institute agents with riot gear and shields grabbing one migrant, knocking him to the ground, and kicking him. The OSAC information exchange mechanism also . They often experienced racism and discrimination and were frequently victims of violence. Physical Conditions: According to the Federal Prison System, as of June there were 220,393 inmates in 288 state and federal facilities with a designed capacity for 217,064. Social programs to combat child labor did not address all sectors where child labor occurred. Zeron led the investigation of the case by the former criminal investigations unit in the Attorney Generals Office at the time of the students disappearances. We'll also touch briefly on how you . On January 14, community leaders went to the municipal headquarters of Ayutla de los Libres, Guerrero, to urge revocation of Protestant families local property rights for refusing to participate in the construction and servicing of the local Catholic church. There were no reports of political prisoners or detainees. A 2019 constitutional amendment grants the president the authority to use the armed forces to protect internal and national security through 2024. In February authorities arrested 12 state police officers in Camargo, Tamaulipas, on homicide charges in connection with the massacre and burning of the bodies of three smugglers and 16 Guatemalan migrants en route to the United States. A Mexico City municipal law provides increased penalties for hate crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity. On March 11, an anticorruption and antinepotism constitutional reform granted the Federal Judiciary Council the administrative organ of the federal court system more oversight over district and appeals courts and limited hiring authorities of individual judges. According to data from the Mexican Social Security Institute, in 2020 there were approximately 278,000 workplace accidents, resulting in 666 deaths. Job announcements specifying desired gender, age, marital status, and parental status were common. Emergency contraception was available, including for survivors of sexual assault. According to the Center for Economic Research and Teaching, most criminal suspects did not receive representation until after their first custody hearing, thus making individuals vulnerable to coercion to sign false statements prior to appearing before a judge. Nevertheless, only 2 percent of schoolteachers in the country were trained to teach children with disabilities, according to the civil society organization Yo Tambien.

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