Multiple local, national, and international civil society organizations submitted reports to the Committee Against Enforced Disappearances, highlighting thousands of disappearances in Chihuahua, a backlog in identifying bodies, kidnapping and extortion of migrants, and the existence of clandestine graves involving Mexican authorities.
An analysis of dozens of documents submitted by these organizations to the UN reveals that the state of Chihuahua and six other states together account for 51,645 unidentified bodies, representing 71.73% of the national total. These bodies are either in the custody of forensic services or have been buried in mass graves.
According to documentation provided by civil society organizations to the dossier compiled by the UN Committee Against Enforced Disappearances—whose report was rejected this week by the Mexican government—the states with backlogs in identification are, in addition to Chihuahua, Baja California, Mexico City, the State of Mexico, Jalisco, Tamaulipas, and Nuevo León.
According to the Committee, Mexico faces a forensic crisis that fosters impunity and requires urgent attention in a context of widespread and systematic disappearances that meet the criteria to be classified as crimes against humanity due to their pervasive and systematic nature.
The Committee determined that there is no well-founded evidence of a deliberate federal policy to commit these acts; however, it noted that the State’s failure to prevent and punish these crimes has fostered a climate of impunity that allows them to continue.
The documents do not specify the backlog in identifying bodies in the case of Chihuahua, but they do provide data for Baja California, which reports 14,378 unidentified bodies buried in mass graves in Mexicali, Tijuana, and Ensenada between 2010 and March 2025. In Jalisco, 5,025 unidentified murder victims remain, and in Guanajuato, the number of unidentified bodies reached 907 as of August 2024.
Compared to other states in the Northwest region, Chihuahua surpasses the records of Sonora, with 10,231 cases, and Baja California, with 8,004 cases, and is nearly on par with Sinaloa, which has 15,755 cases.
Nationally, Chihuahua ranks below states with higher rates of unidentified victims, such as Jalisco, which reports 25,249 unidentified individuals, and the State of Mexico, with 63,927 total cases.
Civil society documentation indicates that in January 2025, local authorities and collectives reported the discovery of 40 clandestine graves in Chihuahua.
In the area of human rights, the state has accumulated 38 complaints before the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) for alleged enforced or involuntary disappearances between 2009 and 2025, making it the fourth state with the highest incidence in this category, surpassed only by Tamaulipas (72), Veracruz (42), and Michoacán (40). The CNDH has issued two formal recommendations regarding incidents that occurred in Chihuahua in 2011 and 2022.
The documentation also includes a study of 177 migrants in Ciudad Juárez, which indicates that 50% were victims of robbery, 20.4% were kidnapped while transiting through the state, and that in 30% of these cases, testimonies referred to the involvement of Mexican authorities.
The state has also submitted a communication to the International Criminal Court (ICC) regarding the alleged commission of crimes against humanity between 2008 and 2010.
In Mexico, the National Registry of Missing and Unlocated Persons (RNPDNO) reports a total of 133,236 people who remain missing or unlocated.
Given this volume of cases, the UN Committee against Enforced Disappearances (CED) activated the procedure under Article 34 of the International Convention, based on evidence that disappearances are practiced in a widespread or systematic manner.
“In its concluding observations of 2015, the Committee noted that the information received evidenced a context of widespread disappearances across much of Mexican territory, many of which could be classified as enforced disappearances,” the document sent to the Mexican government a few days ago states.
In this “advanced unedited version” of the UN Committee Against Enforced Disappearances, it also noted “deficiencies in the system established to prevent, investigate and punish enforced disappearances; problems related to the National Registry of Missing or Disappeared Persons and the lack of a single registry that would allow for obtaining reliable statistics.”
Source: diario
