- Days after the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) referred the situation in Mexico to the UN General Assembly, a formal request made by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the Fiscalía General de la República (FGR) [Office of the Attorney General of the Republic] acknowledged that previous investigative efforts had been fragmented and insufficient and announced a change in the approach used for investigations.
- The FGR recognised the need to change the strategy used for large-scale criminal operations and decided that during the next three years, it will give priority to the fight against extortion, enforced disappearances, and femicide.
- This change follows years of advocacy by the FIDH and its member organisations on the need to revise the investigative methods used by the prosecutors throughout the country to address these crimes.
3 September 2026. On 17 April 2026, days after the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED), invoking Article 34 of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, decided to refer Mexico’s situation to the UN General Assembly, the Office of the Attorney General (FGR) announced a change to the methods used to seek justice.
Attorney General Ernestina Godoy publicly acknowledged that, for years, the State had responded in a "fragmented and insufficient" manner to complex criminal phenomena; she subsequently presented a new Strategic Plan for Criminal Investigations that gives priority to investigations into disappearances, femicides, and extortion. The Strategic Plan reads that, "The diagnosis is clear: criminality has shifted to large-scale structures that cannot be combated through fragmented investigations, isolated efforts, or bureaucratic ministerial red tape. Consequently, the institution has determined that the success of criminal investigations will no longer be measured by the volume of case files opened or closed".
The Strategic Plan was unveiled after the triggering of the Article 34, procedure and the CED conclusions that there were well-founded indications of enforced disappearances being committed in Mexico on a widespread and systematic basis that constitute crimes against humanity. The CED decision created a crucial international basis for demands for more coordinated responses to the disappearances crisis and the structural impunity that affect victims and their families.
For the last ten years, the FIDH has been documenting crimes against in Coahuila, Vera Cruz, Nayarit and Baja California. In documents, meetings with local prosecutors and with the FGR, during press conferences, and in communications to the International Criminal Court the FIDH has consistently insisted on the imperative need to stop investigations into individual persons and to adopt methods that would identify patterns, links between cases, the chain of command, and more extensive criminal operations.
In February 2025, the FIDH formally requested the activation of the procedure under Article 34 of the Convention, on the basis of more than a decade of documentation and advocacy conducted with Mexican organizations, FIDH member organisations, and victims’ organisations.
The FIDH documented the disappearances of women and subsequently published two reports: one on disappearances linked to human trafficking in the State of Mexico, and the other on the deficiencies in the response by authorities in the state of Guerrero to the disappearances of women and girls.
In addition to the reports, an advocacy mission was conducted in Mexico in November 2025 in which Idheas and the Equipo Mexicano de Antropología Forense (EMAF) [Mexican Anthropological Forensic Team] also took part. Among the main recommendations that were made was the need to investigate the disappearances, human trafficking and femicides in a comprehensive and structured manner by, inter alia, strengthening coordination among specialized criminal investigation and prosecution units.
Given the current context, having the Office of the General Prosecutor of the Republic publicly acknowledge the limitations of the fragmented approach that had been applied and announcing the application of a strategy based on inter-institutional coordination, the harmonisation of investigative criteria, and the strengthening of specialized units represent, overall, significant progress with respect to the concerns raised for years by the FIDH, its member organisations, and victims organisations.
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The FIDH strongly welcomes the announcements, but also emphasises that significant change will require political will, adequate resources, and sustained international support. The FIDH hopes that the announced reforms will materialise and that investigative methods in Mexico will evolve toward an approach that: guarantees dignified access to justice for victims and their loved ones; identifies patterns; and acknowledges the existence of frequent collusion between public officials and organised crime, and of crimes against humanity. It also hopes that a new approach will ultimately contribute to punishing the persons with the greatest responsibility for these crimes, the dismantling of major criminal organisations, and significantly reducing enforced disappearances and femicides in the country. The FIDH will continue to closely monitor the implementation of these reforms.
