An additional February reform mandated pretrial detention for femicides, sexual violence against minors, forced disappearances, and corruption. 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 . Federal law prohibits discrimination against persons with physical, sensory, intellectual, and mental disabilities. Calls included reports of relationship aggression, sexual assault, sexual harassment, rape, and intrafamily violence. As of August 25, former governor of Chihuahua Cesar Duarte was awaiting an extradition decision. Safety Tips for Travelers . In 2019 legislators passed a constitutional reform recognizing Afro-Mexicans as an ethnic group. The Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System reported 23,907 domestic violence cases in May, an all-time monthly record. Some civil society groups, however, asserted that state commissions were subservient to the state executive branch. Freedom of expression advocacy groups reported the government, despite reductions in its advertising budgets, continued to have a strong financial impact and influence on the largest media companies. The NGO Disability Rights International reported various instances of abuse, including the use of prolonged restraints and isolation rooms for children with disabilities in both public and private institutions. In October and November, I spent several . In June a federal judge sentenced Juan Francisco Picos Barrueto to 32 years in prison for the 2017 murder of journalist Javier Valdez Cardenas. In July a joint investigation by media outlets reported a leaked Pegasus list of more than 15,000 individuals as possible targets for surveillance in 2016 and 2017. Censorship or Content Restrictions: Human rights groups reported that some state and local governments censored media. On October 1, a judge sentenced Fidel Figueroa, mayor of Zacualpan, state of Mexico, to 236 years in prison for murder. In July 2020 authorities extradited Lozoya, former director of PEMEX, the state-owned petroleum company, from Spain. By law workers may remove themselves from situations that endanger health or safety without jeopardy to their employment. Also in June a federal judge sentenced the former mayor of Chinipas, Chihuahua, Hugo Amed Schultz Alcaraz, to eight years in prison for his role in the 2017 murder of Miroslava Breach, a prominent La Jornada newspaper correspondent who reported on organized crime and corruption. Federal government funding for womens shelters for the year was the same as in 2020. Respect for the Integrity of the Person, a. In August 2020 attackers fired multiple shots at the building housing the printing facilities of El Diario de Iguala. 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. 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. Police occasionally failed to provide impoverished detainees access to counsel during arrests and investigations as provided for by law, although the right to public defense during trial was generally respected. 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. The government made efforts to prevent, investigate, and punish acts of disappearance involving government agents. Sexual Harassment: Federal law prohibits sexual harassment and provides for fines from 250 to 5,000 times the minimum daily wage, but the law was not effectively enforced. In-person classes resumed in October 2021, but with limited . Corruption and Lack of Transparency in Government, Section 5. 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 a result other unions, including a new union formed by workers after the vote, gained the right to seek representation rights and negotiate a new agreement. Between 2017 and August the Office of the Special Prosecutor for Crimes against Journalists, a unit in the Prosecutor Generals Office, charged 136 public servants for crimes against journalists. The CNDH reported indigenous women were among the most vulnerable groups in society. The U.S. government has limited ability to provide . Governmental Posture Towards International and Nongovernmental Investigation of Alleged Abuses of Human Rights, Section 6. Municipal police arrested eight women and one man, later releasing all detainees. Between January and June, state authorities opened 129,020 new domestic violence investigations. The Prosecutor Generals Office owned a previous genetics database, which consisted of 63,000 profiles, and was responsible for the new database. Through a nationwide assessment process, the National Search Commission (CNB) revised the governments official number of missing or disappeared persons repeatedly as additional data became available. 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. Sources indicate that organized criminal organizations have been . 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. In rural areas in 2019, the cause of most maternal deaths was obstetric hemorrhage. Journalists in Iguala, Guerrero, received anonymous messages through social networks, such as Facebook and WhatsApp, threatening them and their families, according to civil society. 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. September had the highest incident rate, with an average of 84 women killed in each month. The constitution provides indigenous persons the right to self-determination, autonomy, and education. There were several reports that government entities or their agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings, often with impunity. ; For U.S. citizens: the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok can be reached via an emergency line: 02-205-4000. 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. President Lopez Obrador condemned the threats, and the Interior Secretariat confirmed that authorities would grant Uresti protection measures. Political parties nominated more female candidates for public office in the midterm elections than ever before, including half of their candidates for governor in the 15 races up for election. The law prohibits such practices and requires search warrants. 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. Land conflicts, social and ethnic violence, or local political disputes caused other incidents. In 2020 the STPS Federal Labor Inspectorate conducted almost 30,000 labor inspections nationwide but reported finding only one case of child labor. The United States Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC) has issued a travel advisory for Americans planning to travel to Mexico for spring break. The report noted 40 state prisons experienced overcrowding. According to National Security Secretariat statistics, between January and June, state-level prosecutors and attorneys general opened 495 femicide investigations throughout the country, exceeding the 477 state-level femicide investigations opened in the first half of 2020 (statistics from state-level reports often conflated femicides with all killings of women). OSAC is a partnership between the U.S. Department of State and private-sector security community. Between January and June, the commission registered that 115,534 women received attention in Justice Centers for Women throughout the country, a 19 percent increase over the same period in 2020. Organized criminal elements, including local and transnational gangs, and narcotics traffickers, were significant perpetrators of violent crimes and committed acts of homicide, torture, kidnapping, extortion, human trafficking, bribery, intimidation, and other threats, resulting in high levels of violence and exploitation, particularly targeting vulnerable groups. 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. Civil society organizations, however, reported that the number of labor inspections was not sufficient to secure compliance. The governments failure to enforce labor laws left workers with little recourse for violations of freedom of association, poor working conditions, and other labor provisions in states that had not yet implemented the new labor justice model. Posted on 26 Feb in delores winans grandchildren. This decision prevented a protection union from attempting to stop the strike by filing a challenge to the Mineros Unions control of the existing collective bargaining agreement at the San Martin mine in Sombrerete, Zacatecas. Politicians publicly discredited and criticized such journalists, however. Administration: Authorities did not always conduct investigations into credible allegations of mistreatment. Federal law prohibits domestic violence and stipulates penalties for conviction of between six months and four years imprisonment. As of October the special unit had reissued arrest warrants for 11 of the 78 released detainees, including municipal police officers, but made no arrests. famous las vegas male singers. 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. The pandemic severely impacted the economy, resulting in a significant increase in the number of children engaging in child labor. Call this number to report violent crime, arrest, or grave . The reforms call for the creation of independent labor courts to replace the Conciliation and Arbitration Boards (CABs) that favored corporatist unions in the resolution of disputes and facilitated the registration of protection contracts. According to a 2019 National Child Labor Survey, the number of children ages five to 17 in child labor, including in hazardous household work, was 3.3 million, or approximately 11.5 percent of children in the country. 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. The constitution and law prohibit discrimination with respect to employment or occupation. Authorities were attempting to extradite Roemer from Israel. In Chiapas in July an unidentified perpetrator killed Simon Pedro Perez Lopez, a human rights activist and member of the Las Abejas de Acteal civil society organization. An opinion poll in April 2019 showed more than 70 percent of the population supporting the CICIG. INEGI found that 53 percent of women of reproductive age used modern contraception in 2018 (the most recent study). 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. Yet, the 2022 outlook for both the rule of law and public safety in Mexico and meaningful U.S.-Mexico security cooperation remains bleak. 2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Mexico, An official website of the United States Government, https://www.state.gov/religiousfreedomreport/, https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/International-Parental-Child-Abduction/for-providers/legal-reports-and-data/reported-cases, https://www.state.gov/trafficking-in-persons-report/, https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/resources/reports/child-labor/findings/, https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-of-goods. Corruption: There were numerous reports of government corruption during the year. The law provides for the freedoms of peaceful assembly and association, and the government generally respected these rights, with some exceptions. The law prohibits minors from working in a broad list of hazardous and unhealthy occupations. Hundreds of thousands of workers continued to work in foreign-owned factories, mainly in northern border states, producing electronics, medical equipment, and auto parts. Last Update: Reissued with updates to health information. The governments National Protection Mechanism to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Defenders provided panic buttons, bodyguards, and temporary relocation to journalists and human rights defenders. Labor recruiters enticed families to work during harvests with verbal promises of decent wages and a good standard of living. According to NGO Article 19, lethal attacks occurred against journalists in Sonora, including the killings of Benjamin Morales on May 3 and Ricardo Lopez Dominguez on July 22 and the disappearance of Jorge Molontzin on March 16. 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. Civil society and families of the disappeared stated the governments actions to prevent and respond to disappearances were largely inadequate to address the scale of the problem. The order directed the Attorney General's Office to reopen the investigation into the 2014 killings of 22 civilians by members of the military in Tlatlaya, Mexico State. Figueroa collaborated with criminal organizations to kidnap the prosecutor general of Ixtapan de la Sal, state of Mexico, and others in 2019, resulting in the death of one of the prosecutor generals bodyguards. Most internal affairs units, however, were insufficiently staffed and funded. The government was reasonably effective in enforcing child labor laws in large and medium-sized companies, especially in the export-oriented factory (maquiladora) sector and other industries under federal jurisdiction. Forced internal displacement disproportionally affected indigenous communities. The government investigated and prosecuted some of these crimes, but the vast majority remained uninvestigated and unprosecuted. The National Guard and state and municipal police are responsible for enforcing the law and maintaining order. Reports JASON Study 2021 [7 MB] DSS 2020 Accomplishments [6 MB] Antiterrorism Assistance Retrospective 2018-2019 [9 MB] Brochures & Text The Diplomatic Security Service: U.S. Diplomacy's Global Force (PDF) [7 MB] The Diplomatic Security Service: U.S. Diplomacy's Global Force (Text) Diplomatic Security Regional Security Office (PDF) [4 MB] Diplomatic Security Regional Security Office [] As of June, 58 percent of women in federal prison and 51 percent in municipal and state prisons were in pretrial detention, while 42 percent of men in the federal and local judicial system were in pretrial detention, according to a report from the Secretariat of Security and Civilian Protection. The CNDH maintained a human rights program to inform and assist members of indigenous communities. The law states that the principle of gender parity should be observed in the designation of cabinet members, selection of candidates for public office by every political party, and designation of members of the judiciary. U.S. Department of State - United States Department of State For example, Felipe Orozco, hospitalized multiple times for mental disabilities, reported that mental health professionals from a psychiatric hospital in Puebla shackled him naked with a padlock during the nights for two and one-half weeks. Femicide is a federal offense punishable by 40 to 70 years in prison. In addition to criminal libel and defamation laws, civil law defines moral damage as similar to defamation concerning harm to a persons feelings, affections, beliefs, dignity, honor, reputation, and privacy, according to the NGO Committee to Protect Journalists. The law prohibits the worst forms of child labor. Sexual Exploitation of Children: The law prohibits the commercial sexual exploitation of children, and authorities generally enforced the law. The law mandates the creation of a public registry of companies supplying specialized services to verify only registered companies fulfilling tax and administrative requirements may supply those services. As of August 16, authorities had not arrested any suspects. Enforcement, however, was inconsistent across the states. The federal government created a National System for the Search of Missing Persons as required by law, but as of August it had not established the required National Forensic Data Bank. Labor inspections focused on the formal sector, leaving informal workers with no labor law protection. Southern states reported the lowest access to skilled health care during pregnancy due to geographic, financial, and cultural barriers. 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. 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.