National Search Commission

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The National Search Commission (CNB) is a Mexican commission which was established in 2018 [1] for the purpose of finding the more than 100,000 missing people in Mexico, who have been victims of extrajudicial killings, torture and enforced disappearances. [2] Often, the victim's body is burned in an attempt to ("enforce disappearance") destroy all evidence. [1] [3]

Contents

History

The commission was established in 2018 and the commissioner at the helm was Karla Quintana from February 2019 until her resignation in August 2023. [4] The commission has a budget of $22 million and a staff of 89 as of December 2020. [2]

Over 1000 clandestine mass graves have been found in Mexico and families are often tasked with having to investigate missing persons without much help from the Mexican Police. [5] [6] The National Search Commission has worked with forensic teams and in 2022, were searching through thousands of human remains in Nuevo Laredo, at a place authorities call a cartel 'extermination' site. [1]

According to the Human Rights Watch, Mexico has had a history of extrajudicial killings, torture, and "enforced disappearances", [7] [8] which began during the Mexican Dirty War when an estimated 1,200 people disappeared. [9] The disappearances were carried out by Mexico's government forces. [10]

This has continued throughout the Mexican drug war, with drug cartels and organized crime groups perpetrating the crimes, sometimes with help from the police. The War on drugs is a global campaign, [11] led by the U.S. federal government, of drug prohibition, military aid, and military intervention, with the aim of reducing the illegal drug trade in the United States. [12]

The commission's main responsibility is accounting for and finding Mexico's missing people. The number of missing people ranged from 79,000 in 2020, [2] to 92,000 in 2021. [13] On February 28, 2022, the Associated Press stated the official number was 98,356 [1] and other sources estimated there were nearly 100,000 missing. [14] By May, 2022, the number was officially at more than 100,000. [3]

In April 2022, the Commission stated there are more than 20,000 missing women and that half of those women are from Nuevo León. a state in the Northeast region of Mexico. [15]

Duties of the CNB

The functions of the National Search Commission include creating a record of the missing, and working with teams to find the missing.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "At cartel extermination site; Mexico nears 100k missing". AP NEWS. February 28, 2022. Retrieved March 3, 2022.
  2. 1 2 3 "Searching for the missing: challenges for Mexico's search commissioner". Mexico News Daily. December 3, 2020. Retrieved March 3, 2022.
  3. 1 2 "Mexico's official list of missing people passes 100,000, with few cases ever solved". NPR.org. May 18, 2022. Retrieved May 19, 2022.
  4. ↑ "Official leading search for thousands of missing people in Mexico resigns". Al Jazeera. August 24, 2023. Retrieved August 31, 2023.
  5. ↑ "45 bodies found in clandestine grave sites in Mexico". NBC News. May 12, 2019. Retrieved March 3, 2022.
  6. ↑ "World Report 2019: Rights Trends in Mexico". Human Rights Watch. December 20, 2018. Retrieved March 3, 2022.
  7. ↑ Diaz, Lizbeth (March 28, 2022). "Mexican armed forces knew about attack on 43 students, report says". Reuters. Retrieved March 30, 2022.
  8. ↑ "World Report 2019: Rights Trends in Mexico". Human Rights Watch. December 20, 2018. Retrieved March 3, 2022.
  9. ↑ Reuters Editorial (2008-07-08). "Mexico looks for 'dirty war' graves on army base". Reuters . Retrieved 2016-10-29.{{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  10. ↑ Ribando Seelke, Clare; Martin, Rachel L. (October 21, 2020). "Human Rights Challenges in Mexico: Addressing Enforced Disappearances" (PDF). FAS Project on Government Secrecy. Congressional Research Service. Retrieved 3 March 2022.
  11. ↑ War on Drugs. The Global Commission on Drug Policy. 2011. p. 24. Archived from the original on January 9, 2016. Retrieved September 18, 2017.
  12. ↑ Baum, Writer Dan. "Legalize All Drugs? The 'Risks Are Tremendous' Without Defining The Problem". NPR.org. Archived from the original on January 15, 2018. Retrieved April 3, 2018.
  13. ↑ "Collaborating with organized crime in the search for disappeared persons? Formalizing a humanitarian alternative for Mexico". International Review of the Red Cross. December 1, 2021. Retrieved March 3, 2022.
  14. ↑ "Cartel 'extermination' site shows Mexico's insufficient pace to find 100,000 missing". NBC News. March 1, 2022. Retrieved March 3, 2022.
  15. ↑ "National Search Commission reported that half of the missing persons in Mexico are from Nuevo León". infobae. April 24, 2022. Retrieved August 15, 2022.
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