September 25th 2018

The CONAVIM (the National System of prevention, response, punishing, and eradication of violence against women keeps following the status of the procedural and study of the request promoted by two social organizations as well as by other two aside in order to make a second declaration of Gender violence in the state of Mexico owing to women disappearance in 7 municipalities.

The organizations claim, among other points: institutional violence, victim’s criminalization, and high impunity in terms of femicides and disappearances.

The seven municipalities proposed for this second emergency alert are part of the eleven municipalities in the state of Mexico in which already exists a gender alert because of femicides since July 2015, for which if the request proceeds, seven of the municipalities will count with two simultaneous alerts: The first one owing to femicides and the second one to women disappearances.

The municipalities are: Toluca, Ecatepec, Nezahualcóyotl, Cuautitlán Izcalli, Chimalhuacán, Ixtapaluca and Valle de Chalco. On the first gender alert emitted for eleven municipalities, we can found Chalco, Tultitlán, Tlalnepantla y Naucalpan.

CONAVIM is currently analyzing the second request which was formalized on past June by IDHEAS (strategic litigious in human rights) and the Mexican Institute of Human Rights & Democracy A.C.

Also, besides the organizations herein, there is also another 2 underwritten in quality of solidarize organisms in the request of June 25, 2018. These organizations underwritten in the document as support are Uniendo Esperanzas and Deudos y Defensores por la Dignidad de Nuestros Desaparecidos settled in the State of Mexico.

The request points out textually that:

The reason of this request is base on the fact that there is a dramatic number of women and girls disappeared within the State of Mexico. Particularly in the municipalities of Toluca de Lerdo, Ecatepec de Morelos, Nezahualcóyotl, Cuautitlán Izcalli, Chimalhuacán, Ixtapaluca and Valle de Chalco. In addition, there is also a high rate of impunity, institutional violence, revictimization, and criminalization; a lack of accurate and effective public policies in order to resolve and prevent this type of crimes.

The requesting organizations point out that the concept of femicide violence to which they take to make the request of a second declaratory for women disappearances, it is inside the dispositions of the 21 article of the General Law of Access of women to a Life Free of Violence, ‘every time that women disappearance is the conclusion of misogynist conducts that involves all the social spheres I which the women´s life develops in the State of Mexico’.

This second request of Gender Alert by disappearances are in the CONAVIM pipeline among another six requests in the interest of the gender alert in 16 delegations of the Mexico City; in five municipalities of Campeche; In the 39 municipalities of Durango; in the municipalities of Torreon, Coahuila; another request in the interest of the Declaration for Gender Violence in 10 Municipalities of Jalisco; as well as another one in Puebla (the whole state).

Diagnostic from NGOs

The diagnostic presented by the NGOs proponents of the second Gender Alert by Disappearances in seven Municipalities of the State of Mexico, indicates that throughout the last few years, there was an increase of the rates of disappearances of women, girls and teenagers, activists pointed out.

According to IDHEAS the rate of women disappearance has increased in 227% in the last three years, mainly in the municipalities of Toluca, Nezahualcoyotl, Chimalhuacan and Cuautitlan Izcalli.

IDHEAS blames that there is not a proper itemization of over 1.790 feminine disappearances. This supposes a 46% at a state level. This is much higher than at a national level which is of 25%, according to the diagnostic altogether with the declaratory request.

The document indicates that 43% of the disappearances reported by the government of the state, occurred within the seven municipalities requested to have the second Alert.

Also, significant inconsistencies were pointed out in the official statistics about women disappearance, since through several data requests the State of Mexico District attorney´s office (FGJEM) reported last April a total of 2 thousand 367 cases of disappeared women and only 343 cases on December.

Against these inconsistencies, organizations such as the National Supervisor of Feminicide and the Supervisor of Feminicide in Toluca, pointed out that the FGJEM is again hiding out the real numbers of femicides and disappearances.

Likewise, the organizations reported incongruences regarding the statistics delivered by the RNPED (National Network of lost and Missing People) since its data base, reports only 1.790 cases of women disappearance in the State of Mexico. That is to say 33% more than the numbers reported by local authorities.

According to the delivered diagnostic, 59% of the disappearances reported by the State of Mexico District attorney´s office correspond to girls and teenagers aged less than 18; whilst another one reports 31% of girls aged between 15 and 17.

Working group

the request for the issue of the second Gender Alert in the State of Mexico has gone through a path with several obstacles, since it was necessary to launch at least three national (and several at state level) calls for members in order to bring together the working group integrated by experts that ought to analyse the request, undertake relevant research on the topic and the reports that will determine its provenance. The fists ones were declared deserted since there were no suitable profiles to fill in.

Finally, the working group to analyse this alert rest formed by Yazmín Catalina Flores Lopez as Deputy director support and monitoring of Gender Violence Alerts; Maria de Jesus Suarez Tejada as representative of the National Institute of Women; Bertha Liliana Onofre González as representative of the National Commission of Human Rights; Leonor Guadalupe Delgadillo Guzmán as representative of UAEMEX and Raquel Güereca Torres as representative of UAM, cadre Lerma.

The two people of national academic or investigation institutions are: Geru Aparicio Aviña representative of the National Institute of Legal Sciences and Ibett Estrada Gazga from IUS Semper University.

On August 14, the request faced another pitfall, since the governor of the State of Mexico ordered the substitution of Sol Berenice Salgado Ambros in charge of the commission of lost people searching of the State of Mexico as part of the working team and was replaced by Melissa Estefanía Vargas Camachi, whom currently runs the charge of executive spokeswoman in the Women’s State Council. She also counts with a long career inside the PRI party in the State of Mexico.

For this replacement, the governor sent a form to CONAVIM, according to a notification document of the same organism in charge of analysing the alert, dated on August 16TH.

The working group has been working consistently since late August until the past September 17th when they had their last meeting. On the next week the group headed several visits and work meetings in Toluca as part of their agenda on field investigations. Furthermore there was an interview with relatives of disappearance victims.

The group is expected to deliver a detailed report of its latest investigations as soon as possible.







Translator: Fabián Peñaloza