The voluminous security debt

Lawyer Specialist in constitutional matters and amparo

The threat of violence suffered by women continues to be a serious problem, not only in Mexico, but around the world. A few weeks ago, the headline in the French newspapers caught our attention, which spoke of the arrest of two out of five subjects who participated in a mob rape against a Mexican tourist, in the Champ Mars, near the Eiffel Tower, in Paris. The news was alarming, having arrived, virtually, at the same time as the other one in which the discovery of the lifeless body of María Fernanda Sánchez, a 22-year-old Mexican student who disappeared in Berlin, was reported.

The relevance of the two crimes has provoked important political reactions in each of the two European countries.

From January 2019 to January 2023, 1,456 women were reported missing, only in Mexico City. More than 2,700 women suffer the same crime, in the same period, nationwide. The phenomenon overflows when the disappearance of men is also added to the count. This is a security problem that, as opponents have said this weekend, occupies the first place of attention among Mexicans.

In this context of contagious fear in which we are all immersed, news like the one that appears in Brazilian newspapers last week resonates and is welcomed, in which it reports on the initiative launched in the city of Sao Paulo—the most populated in that South American country—, for which a video communication system has been implemented at each bus stop, so that, after a certain time at night, no woman has to wait alone for the arrival of transportation. All it takes is a clap on the spectacular screens for another woman to respond in real time to whoever requests company, in order to help her or simply monitor and ensure that the woman who requests it safely accesses the means that takes her back to her home. his house.

Mexico City, one of the most populated on the planet, has the peculiarity of not being a city that enjoys relevant nightlife; on the contrary, it is a large city mostly daytime. At night there are many spaces that, like Campo Marte, are isolated and lacking any surveillance. They become, through the cloak of darkness, free zones, open to crime; spaces in which any of us are exposed to personal harassment.

The claim periodically made by groups defending women’s rights is transcendental, with the aim of changing the current state of affairs. The assumption of more dynamic prevention policies is urgently needed, through which the public space is recovered; police personnel are trained to intervene promptly in the event of any call for help; and labor policies with a gender perspective that facilitate an early arrival to the home where their families await them are promoted.

Next year, very relevant changes will come in terms of administration at all levels of government. Whoever becomes a candidate must be evaluated based on their proposals, beyond their mere ideology. There will be speeches embroiled in the great privileges that the implementation of the current programs that are attributed to Andrés Manuel López Obrador represents for some social classes; It should not be forgotten that all of them are here to stay, to the extent that they have been included in the text of our Constitution. After these, what comes next? What new actions should be carried out to improve the living conditions and security of all Mexicans?

A voluminous debt is accumulating in the field of security and the tools that have been used to combat it over the last two decades have proven to be a resounding failure. The perception of emptiness and ungovernability with which Mexico is seen from the outside constitutes a reality in which vast spaces and communities are immersed, dispersed throughout the national territory. The months of the campaign that are to come must be used to build government agreements that favor, in a truly federalist spirit, a harmonized participation of all levels of power to coordinate a crusade against the criminal gangs that have subdued the population.

Having served this six-year term to make clear the serious social differences that prevent sincere twinning among all Mexicans, let us use the years that follow to undertake actions that serve to remedy the problems that, ultimately, are common to both. Let us hope that our political class is up to the challenge that the overwhelming violence that afflicts us, in which there is no geopolitical distinction of any kind, has come to impose on us.

There will be few opportunities left before the lack of control and national anarchy provoke an external reaction: one, which could occur in the US Congress, a country with which we have a delicate commercial relationship; the other, which could legally lead to the establishment of international responsibilities against the Mexican State.

There are many precedents addressed by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in which the international responsibility of the State for omissions attributable to the organs of public power is recognized and identified. There are also many cases in which the potential transfer of responsibility from a violation of human rights between individuals to the State has been identified, when it fails to comply with its constitutional duty to implement the actions and policies necessary to prevent such violations.

The cases of forced disappearance of persons, and of women in particular, accumulate in Mexico and reach the same international resonance as the first two cases to which we refer in this opinion. The omission attributable to our authorities for refraining from conducting adequate strategies to avoid this national disgrace, comes to mean a serious violation of the human rights of the victims that can transcend the time and space in which, until today, they have been discussing the issues.