In an unprecedented decision, the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances in March found there were sufficient grounds to believe “that enforced disappearance is being practiced on a widespread or systematic basis” in Mexico and, pursuant to Article 34 of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances (CED), referred the situation in Mexico to the U.N. General Assembly.
In its decision (para. 123), the Committee requested two types of action from the U.N. General Assembly: first, to provide technical assistance to Mexico (party to the CED since 2008) to support the State authorities in searching for the disappeared persons and investigating the alleged enforced disappearances, in particular those involving State agents linked to organized crime groups; and second, to provide support for establishing a mechanism that would allow the access to truth for the relatives of the disappeared persons.
In an April 2 press release, the Mexican authorities indicated that they “reject” the Committee’s report “as biased and dismissive of the observations, analysis, and updates submitted by the Mexican Government. Those submissions show that the Committee’s arguments are inconsistent with both its own definition of enforced disappearance and Mexico’s institutional advances since 2019, and particularly since 2025.” The press release added that Article 34 was misused, the provision being “designed for cases in which enforced disappearances are committed in a widespread and systematic manner by State agents, and authorities refuse to act or cooperate. That does not reflect the reality of today’s Mexico, which has undertaken a structural transformation in this area.”
The steps followed by the Committee to adopt the Article 34 decision (material background here), and the State’s detailed replies to the request for information illustrate the main substantive disagreement between Mexico and the Committee concerns the non-state actors’ involvement in the disappearances and their legal qualification by the CED Committee as “crimes against humanity” under Article 5 of the CED. These are largely technical distinctions, however, and the broader point of the Committee’s report is that the dire situation calls for urgent action coordinated between the U.N. and Mexican authorities.
Background Leading to the Article 34 Decision
Before digging into the technicalities of the CED, three points are necessary to understand the context in which the Committee’s decision arose.
First, Mexico does not deny the existence or magnitude of the disappearances, including the enforced disappearances on its territory in the past. On the contrary, in their replies (para. 2), the government acknowledges that “disappearances in Mexico were perpetrated with the direct participation of State agents or tolerated by complicit public officials who denied justice and truth to victims and their families, giving rise to impunity. These practices left a deep wound in Mexican society and sowed mistrust of institutions.”
Second, the CED Committee has for years identified grave and massive human rights violations under different legal bases under the Convention, including Mexico’s periodic reviews (Article 29), urgent actions (Article 30), its 2022 country visit (Article 33), and its views on individual cases (Article 31: for illustration, here). Taken together, this record reflects several patterns “in the vast majority of Mexican states” (para. 13 of the country visit findings), such as the direct or indirect involvement of “public officials at the federal, state and municipal levels,” “various forms of collusions and varying degrees of participation” of public officials in disappearances committed by organized crime, a major “forensic crisis” (para. 28 of the country visit findings), structural shortcomings in searching for the disappeared persons, the risk faced with by victims’ families, and “almost absolute impunity” (paras. 25-27 of the country visit findings).
In addition, other human rights bodies such as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) have condemned Mexico’s actions and omissions in failing to protect against or investigate disappearances, including in cases considered through a gender perspective (the infamous ‘Cotton Field’ and Garcia Andrade et al. cases) or an indigenous lens (Gonzalez Mendez et al.). The IACHR has also found that Mexico fostered a climate of impunity in favor of perpetrators (Radilla Pacheco v. Mexico), especially where there is a connection with local police officers or prominent officials. In the same vein, the U.N. Human Rights Committee has repeatedly affirmed Mexico’s obligations to fight against impunity and to ensure the right of the relatives to have access to truth under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Therefore, the situation of impunity and lack of access to justice for victims of disappearances is well-documented, well-known, and protracted.
Finally, as the CED Committee acknowledged in its Article 34 decision (para. 67), all the disappearances do not necessarily qualify as enforced disappearances. However, under Article 12(2) of the CED, States’ obligation to investigate apply “where there are reasonable grounds for believing” that a person has been forcibly disappeared.
Civil society organizations previously requested activation of Article 34, but each time, the CED Committee denied the request (CED/C/MEX/A.34/RI/1). However, in its April 2025 28th session, the CED Committee decided to request information from Mexico under Article 34 (CED/C/MEX/A.34/RI/1), based on reports provided by civil society organizations (here and here). After the information provided was “carefully examined” (CED/C/MEX/A.34/RI/1, para. 11), and combined with the absence of significant improvement of the situation despite its multiple interactions with Mexico since 2012, the Committee issued a preliminary determination that the grounds were met to request further information from Mexico under Article 34, which states:
If the Committee receives information which appears to it to contain well-founded indications that enforced disappearance is being practised on a widespread or systematic basis in the territory under the jurisdiction of a State Party, it may, after seeking from the State Party concerned all relevant information on the situation, urgently bring the matter to the attention of the General Assembly of the United Nations, through the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Since this was the first use of Article 34 in its history, the CED Committee clarified the conditions to be met and in particular the “well-founded indications” criterion. Under Article 34, the Committee explained, it does not act “as a commission of inquiry,” and “[t]herefore, it is not required to apply the standard of proof to determine that events constitute the ‘reasonable grounds’ or ‘substantial reasons to believe’ used by commissions of inquiry or by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in deciding whether to open an investigation” (CED/C/MEX/A.34/RI/1, para. 12). It instead indicated that the “well-founded indications” rule is met when “the information before [the Committee] gives rise to sufficient concern” to call for an urgent action. In the 2026 decision, the CED Committee added that the information was brought in good faith, detailed, and precise, and therefore, sufficient to meet the “prima facie” standard for urgent referral to the UNGA (paras. 53-54).
Mexico’s Replies to the Article 34 Request for Information
In response to the Committee’s request for information, Mexico submitted an 87-page set of replies, received by the Committee in September 2025 (CED/C/MEX/A.34/RRI/R.1). The most significant point of disagreement between Mexico and the Committee reflected in these replies is whether the “widespread or systematic practice” of enforced disappearances, classified as a crime against humanity under Article 5 of the CED, also covers the disappearances committed by non-state actors without the support, authorization, or acquiescence of the State (CED/C/MEX/A.34/RRI/R.1, paras. 28 et seq.).
Indeed, in its decision to invoke Article 34 in 2025 and in its March 2026 decision to refer the situation to the UNGA, the Committee not only addressed State-led enforced disappearances practice (for instance, during Argentina’s “dirty war”) but also the disappearances committed by non-state actors without State support, authorization, or acquiescence, following its 2023 Statement on non-state actors, which provided an evolutionary interpretation of Article 5 of the CED (CED/C/10, paras. 9 et seq.). Indeed, based on an in-depth analysis of international legal practice, the CED Committee concluded in the 2023 Statement that “disappearance perpetrated by a non-State actor acting without the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State constitutes ‘enforced disappearance’ if committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population, in compliance with the definition of crimes against humanity in international criminal law.” In its 2025 report, the Committee cited multiple evidentiary submissions showing “widespread” and/or “systematic” attack, and the 2026 decision devoted considerable analysis to establishing that the standard was met (CED/C/MEX/A.34/D/1, paras. 72-114).
Mexico, in its replies, recalled its repeated objection to the 2023 Statement (CED/C/10) on the grounds that the crime against humanity qualification set out in Article 5 of the CED only applies to enforced disappearances committed by State agents, or with the State’s support, authorization, or acquiescence (Article 2 of the CED) but not to disappearances committed by non-state actors, such as drug cartels. More importantly – and concerningly – Mexico challenged the CED Committee’s “interpretative power” (CED/C/MEX/A.34/RRI/R.1, paras. 71-72). Using the International Law Commission’s draft Conclusions on subsequent agreements and subsequent practice in relation to the interpretation of treaties (A/73/10), it endorsed the ILC’s position and affirmed that a “pronouncement of an expert treaty body cannot as such constitute a subsequent agreement or subsequent practice” (CED/C/MEX/A.34/RRI/R.1, para. 73).
This pushback on the Committee’s power to interpret its own treaty, based on the “living instrument” doctrine, is symptomatic of the increasing trend of States, which perceive this method of interpretation as disrespectful of the States’ consent and the drafters’ intention. These States plead for a more “originalist” interpretation of international instruments by their monitoring bodies, which goes beyond the human rights area. The controversy is not new but as analysed by Eirik Bjorge and other scholars writing on the topic, the evolutionary interpretation of an instrument is in practice based on an objective understanding of the Parties’ intention. This applies to the CED Committee’s 2023 Statement. Substantively, evolving international law, and in particular, international criminal law (ICL) and the interpretation given to Article 7 of the International Criminal Court Statute, has shown that non-state actors can commit an enforced disappearance under ICL, fully relevant for the application of Article 5 of the CED. In this respect, the Mexican replies are legally inconsistent: on the one side, they consider that the “extensive” interpretation of crimes against humanity by the CED Committee is overly broad and groundless, and on the other side, the State asks the CED Committee to interpretate the notion “in accordance with the case law of the International Criminal Court and other international or hybrid tribunals, which describe in detail the conditions that must be met to establish the existence of crimes against humanity” (CED/C/MEX/A.34/RRI/R.1, para. 85).
Following Mexico’s replies, the Committee issued its March 2026 decision, taking into account Mexico’s objections, but also reiterating its interpretation of the crimes against humanity applicable to non-state actors. The CED Committee considered that the information brought by the State party was insufficient to rebut the “well-founded indications” that the conditions for making the referral to UNGA were met. Mexico’s allegation of “bias” and legal inconsistencies must therefore be read and understood against this backdrop. The CED Committee’s decision carefully follows the definition of crimes against humanity developed by international criminal courts and tribunals. The Article 34 decision does not affirm the existence of a current State-led practice of enforced disappearances supported by the federal government, but a protracted and structural failure of the State authorities to search for the disappeared persons – a search most of the time left to the relatives – or to conduct proper investigations and bring the perpetrators of such crimes against humanity to justice (CED/C/MEX/A.34/RI/1, para. 19).
The Urgent Call to the UNGA as an Opportunity for Mexico to Address a Systemic Impunity Situation
The grave situation of disappearances, including enforced disappearances, described by the CED Committee in its April 2025 and March 2026 decisions is not new. The CED Committee has long drawn attention to Mexico, as have other human rights bodies ruling on the question of enforced disappearances under different legal instruments. However, the use of mechanisms tried to date have failed to improve the situation. And in some ways, it is worsening; for example, the involvement of organized crime groups, sometimes with connection with local authorities, is aggravating the “forensics crisis and the climate of impunity” (CED/C/MEX/A.34/RI/1, para. 16). Moreover, credible information reveals the growing challenges and risks faced by searchers – mainly women – which range from criminalization of their search to reprisals, harassment, and threats or use of physical, including sexual, violence. In this regard, the Committee’s urgent call for action can be read as a last attempt to support Mexico in addressing the secondary victimization of relatives of disappeared individuals, including in ways that take into account the unique vulnerabilities of women and girls (for the ongoing work of CED Committee on draft General Comment No. 2 on women, girls and enforced disappearances, see here).
How will the UNGA respond? Since this is the first time the CED Committee refers a situation to the UNGA, it is difficult to predict the outcome of the referral. There is risk that the counter-effect of the Article 34 referral could be the politicization of the matter brought to the attention of the UNGA, and the misuse of the U.S. “fight against drug gangs and cartels” narrative to justify “law enforcement operations” against Mexico.
But if the referral is taken seriously by the UNGA and Mexico, it offers a unique opportunity to achieve the CED object and purpose, to ensure the full realization of the rights of the victims, and in particular, the possibility to offer a worthy burial to the mortal remains of their beloved. As former Judge Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade stated in an Inter-American Court ruling on the remains of the disappeared, “the impossibility of recovering them, in various cases before the Court concerning distinct States, appear to me to configure a malaise of our times, disclosing the appalling spiritual poverty of the dehumanized world in which we live” (individual opinion in Bamaca Velazquez).
The CED Committee call for urgent action must be read as an urgent and long-awaited call for justice, truth, and humanity, and the government of Mexico would do well to embrace the opportunity for international assistance to advance a goal – the reduction of enforced disappearances and justice for those who have already suffered – that it too shares.
