Censorship or Content Restrictions: Human rights groups reported that some state and local governments censored media. But the size of the decline is just noise in the tempo of Mexicos criminal violence. More than 23,000 are listed as having disappeared since President Lpez Obrador took office in December 2018. If taking a taxi alone, take a photo of the taxi number and/or license plate and text it to a friend. Despite these prohibitions, there were reports of security forces torturing suspects. In April authorities arrested 30 members of the navy and charged them with forced disappearances in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, in 2018. The government deployed hundreds of security forces to contain the caravan. As of August 16, the suspects remained in detention awaiting trial. In June the Federal Telecommunications Institute, an autonomous agency created to increase the transparency of media regulation, released internet neutrality guidelines for internet service providers. State labor inspectors, however, reported finding evidence of child labor, particularly in agricultural establishments. As of August there were no developments in the case regarding the abduction and killing of seven-year-old Fatima Aldrighetti Anton. There are no restrictions on travel for U.S. government employees in Mexico State. On Feb. 19, rival drug dealers opened fire at Art Beach Tulum, a restaurant on the outskirts of Tulum where an order of sea bass with asparagus risotto and seaweed cream goes for $35. Femicide is a federal offense punishable by 40 to 70 years in prison. U.S. Department of State - United States Department of State Crime and violence are widespread. Nonetheless, discrimination was common against racial and ethnic minorities, including Black, Afro-Mexican, and indigenous groups. Authorities declared 10 political parties eligible to participate in the midterm elections. Six allow it for any reason up to 12 weeks of pregnancy. In its December 2020 climate action plan, Mexico increased the baseline against which its emissions reductions are calculated but maintained its 2015 emissions reduction commitments. Mexico Ends Warning System For Covid And Will Treat Virus As Endemic. Some public officials blocked critical journalists and media from following their social media accounts. Shooting incidents between criminal groups have injured or killed innocent bystanders. A forensic doctor at the Yucatan Prosecutor Generals Office confirmed that he had suffered sexual abuse. Cabo's vibrant nightlife, sceneries, and welcoming natives might force you to reconsider canceling your planned vacation. On May 18, an exhibit in Mexico City on Israeli innovation was vandalized with anti-Semitic and anti-Israel messages. Nevertheless, only 2 percent of schoolteachers in the country were trained to teach children with disabilities, according to the civil society organization Yo Tambien. Of the 32 states, 24 criminalize sexual harassment, and all states have provisions for punishment when the perpetrator is in a position of power. Indigenous persons generally had limited access to health care and education services. Mexico State (Estado de Mexico) Exercise Increased Caution. In July the secretary of the navy publicly apologized to families of the victims, marking the first time the armed forces apologized for committing forced disappearances. The same tribunal rejected registration challenges from four other parties, including former president Felipe Calderons Free Mexico Party, which the INE argued did not produce sufficient evidence of the origin of some funding it received. Workers argued that the protectionist union holding the collective bargaining agreement pressured workers to legitimize the agreement, offered bribes, and tampered with ballots. There are no restrictions on travel for U.S. government employees in Veracruz state. News reports indicated poor working conditions in some factories. Disposition: Inactive They lack access to buildings, transportation, and public spaces. See the Department of States Annual Report on International Parental Child Abduction at https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/International-Parental-Child-Abduction/for-providers/legal-reports-and-data/reported-cases. The law prohibits employers from intervening in union affairs or interfering with union activities, including through implicit or explicit reprisals against workers. Twelve states have laws restricting public demonstrations. Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, on par with war zones like Syria and Afghanistan in number of journalists killed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders. In addition, Puerto Vallarta is very LGBT-friendly with a very laid-back atmosphere. Lpez Obradors initiative Sowing Life, which he touts as a major component of his strategy to cut greenhouse gas emissions, may have caused 72,000 hectares of forest loss, with inadequate monitoring enabling beneficiaries to clear forests and then be paid by the government to plant trees. Amidst this systematic weakening of Mexicos institutions,the effort by Lpez Obrador and his Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero to gut and reverse Mexicos judicial reforms toward an accusatorial system andweaken judicial independenceare among the most detrimental. Human rights violationsincluding torture, enforced disappearances, abuses against migrants, extrajudicial killings, gender-based violence, and attacks on independent journalists and human rights defendershave continued under President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador, who took office in December 2018. Police, the military, and criminal groups are responsible for many disappearances. According to the victims mother, police detained and interrogated him without reasonable suspicion or probable cause. Nonetheless, Quevedo Cruz remained in detention as of September 11. In May 2020, the president formally deployed the military to assist the National Guard in civilian law enforcement. There are no restrictions on travel for U.S government employees in Nayarit state, including tourist areas in: U.S. government employees may not travel to other areas of Zacatecas state. The federal government and states continued to implement the law on forced disappearances. Share this via Twitter Under the Lpez Obrador administration, serious gaps remain in protecting the rights of people with disabilities. Approximately 23 percent of informal workers (6.8 million persons) were employed by formal businesses or organizations but paid in cash off the books to evade taxes and social security payments. Most homicides are targeted assassinations against members of criminal organizations. Defendants have the right to attend the hearings and to challenge the evidence or testimony presented. President Lpez Obrador has greatly expanded the scope of the armed forces activities, deploying them for law enforcement and customs enforcement, and to control irregular immigration, run social programs, and build and operate mega projects. with disabilities attended school at a lower rate than those without disabilities. Nor do reductions in murders mean other forms of violence, such as extortion, or criminal groups control over territories and people, have lessened. Thats not always the case. The Lpez Obrador administration has been illegally expelling thousands of asylum seekers to Guatemala without due process, including many who were first expelled from the US into the custody of Mexican authorities. Their ebb and flow largely reflect choices and tit-for-tat responses by criminal groups toward one another. Mexico highlighted that one of its priorities on the council would be the protection of children. NGOs stated authorities failed to investigate torture allegations adequately. In November 2020 a judge suspended five officials from the Mexico City Prosecutor Generals Office for failing to search for Fatima within 72 hours after she went missing. State human rights commissions investigate state and municipal police forces and can issue similar recommendations. The Jalisco government disarmed the municipal police force of Ixtlahuacan and turned over public security duties to the National Guard and the Jalisco Secretariat for Public Security. A 2019 constitutional amendment grants the president the authority to use the armed forces to protect internal and national security through 2024. There were accusations of sexual abuse against authorities during arrest and detention. See the Department of States Trafficking in Persons Report at https://www.state.gov/trafficking-in-persons-report/. The rate of aggression against political figures during the election cycle was on par with the 2018 election, one of the most violent political periods in recent history. Of the 500 legislators in the Chamber of Deputies, 250 were women, 1 percent more than after the 2018 elections. Tweets disseminated their identities and their media outlets and also made veiled threats. Zeron led the investigation of the case by the former criminal investigations unit in the Attorney Generals Office at the time of the students disappearances. The National Population Council estimated that in 2020 and 2021, a total of 1,172,000 women had limited access to contraceptives due to COVID-19. Share this via WhatsApp In March police officers broke the neck of Salvadoran refugee Victoria Salazar. Some areas of Mexico have increased risk of crime and kidnapping. Globally, it ranks at number 19 in the list of countries with the highest . Through a nationwide assessment process, the National Search Commission (CNB) revised the governments official number of missing or disappeared persons repeatedly as additional data became available. Citizens generally registered the births of newborns with local authorities. As of September 2021, the platform had recorded over 90,000 people disappeared, mostly since 2006. Southern states reported the lowest access to skilled health care during pregnancy due to geographic, financial, and cultural barriers. The 2022 outlook for both the rule of law and public safety in Mexico and meaningful U.S.-Mexico security cooperation remains bleak, writes Vanda Felbab-Brown as she discusses her findings from recently spending several weeks in various parts of Mexico researching the evolution of crime and security policies. Google received more removal requests from government agents in 2020 than in any other year except 2014. The law prohibits children younger than age 15 from working and allows those ages 15 to 17 to work no more than six daytime hours in nonhazardous conditions daily, and only with parental permission and permission from the labor authority. The National Guard and state and municipal police are responsible for enforcing the law and maintaining order. Country Summary: Violent crime such as homicide, kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery is widespread and common in Mexico. Mexico is also one of the most dangerous countries in the world for human rights defenders. He has promised to rescue Mexicos coal and oil industries and has introduced reforms that favor state-owned fossil-fuel power plants over renewable energy sources. Exercise increased caution when visiting local bars, nightclubs, and casinos. The Defense Ministry has paid compensation to families but has not sanctioned any soldiers or reported the cases to police or prosecutors for criminal investigation. Enforcement was inadequate in many small companies, in agriculture, and in construction, and nearly absent in the informal sector in which most child laborers worked. Mexico City (Ciudad de Mexico) Exercise Increased Caution. Three states have state-level IDP laws, but the country does not have a federal internal displacement law, which created challenges in resource allocation and interagency governmental coordination. Libel/Slander Laws: There are no federal criminal laws against defamation, libel, or slander; however, eight states have criminal laws on these acts. Yet, the 2022 outlook for both the rule of law and public safety in Mexico and meaningful U.S.-Mexico security cooperation remains bleak. The group reported 16 acts of aggression against female journalists between January and July and called on the Puebla governor to guarantee the adoption of public policies to respect, protect, and guarantee the exercise of journalism. This report summarizes key indicators that assess the status of the science and engineering (S&E) enterprise within the United States and that illustrate the U.S. global position in multiple aspects of the S&E enterprise. To various degrees, the criminal groups build political power by intimidating and bribing government officials, and obtain political capital with local populations by giving social handouts and organizing narco courts to arbitrate disputes. The Mexican government announced that homicidesdeclined by 3.6% from the previous year to 33,308, just below the 33,739 in 2018 when Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador became president. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the MORENA party coalition won the presidential election in generally free and fair multiparty elections in 2018. A variety of domestic and international human rights groups generally operated without government restriction, investigating and publishing their findings on human rights cases. Freedom to Participate in the Political Process, Section 4. Federal law prohibits discrimination against persons with physical, sensory, intellectual, and mental disabilities. In July 2020 the Supreme Court agreed to analyze the case but as of August 23 had not issued a ruling. After accumulating nine hours of overtime in a week, a worker earns triple the hourly wage. U.S. citizens and LPRs have been victims of kidnapping. The NGO also reported the existence of multiple unregistered private institutions without licenses operating as orphanages. As a result, Mexico has one of the lowest rates of Covid-19 testingand highest rates of positive test resultsin the world. As of December 2020 the Prosecutor Generals Office reported a total of 2,041 federal investigations underway into disappearances involving approximately 3,400 persons. Sexual Harassment: Federal law prohibits sexual harassment and provides for fines from 250 to 5,000 times the minimum daily wage, but the law was not effectively enforced. By law workers may remove themselves from situations that endanger health or safety without jeopardy to their employment. - Around 35% of the borough's residents live in poverty. Additionally, U.S. citizens have been the victims of both non-violent and violent crimes in tourist and non-tourist areas. The midterm elections, the largest in the countrys history due to the record number of more than 20,000 offices up for election, had a 52 percent turnout, a record for a nonpresidential election. Nongovernmental Impact: Organized criminal groups exercised a grave influence over media outlets and reporters, threatening individuals who published critical views of crime groups. In the first six months of the year, Article 19 registered 362 attacks against journalists and accused public officials of committing 134 of them. Reconsider travel due to crime and kidnapping. The court found that absolute criminalization of abortion is unconstitutional and that women should not be criminally prosecuted for undergoing the procedure. the U.S. Mission to Mexico was quick to assert safety levels in the region were compromised, . Members of these groups frequently maintain roadblocks and may use violence towards travelers. The law allows for the reinstatement of workers if the CAB finds the employer fired the worker without just cause and the worker requests reinstatement; however, the law also exempts broad categories of employees from this protection, including so-called employees of confidence and workers in the job for less than one year. The government did not enforce the law effectively. The new vote took place on August 17-18, and a majority of workers rejected the collective bargaining agreement. In 2019 the federal government introduced pensions for persons with disabilities in a state of poverty. A report from the Black Alliance for Just Immigration found black migrants faced widespread racial discrimination from individuals and authorities, particularly in accessing employment and services. Travel on Highway 5 is permissible during daylight hours. According to NGO Article 19, lethal attacks occurred against journalists in Sonora, including the killings of Benjamin Morales on May 3 and Ricardo Lopez Dominguez on July 22 and the disappearance of Jorge Molontzin on March 16. In 2014, Congress reformed the Code of Military Justice, requiring abuses by members of the military against civilians to be prosecuted in civilian, not military, courts. Federal labor law requires a minimum of 20 workers to form a union. Since President Lpez Obrador took office, the National Council on People with Disabilities, the principal government body coordinating efforts to implement disability rights, has been effectively non-operational. According to data from the Mexican Social Security Institute, in 2020 there were approximately 278,000 workplace accidents, resulting in 666 deaths. The reforms call for the creation of independent labor courts to replace the Conciliation and Arbitration Boards (CABs) that favored corporatist unions in the resolution of disputes and facilitated the registration of protection contracts. The government has an established procedure for determining refugee status and providing protections. Enrollment of children with disabilities decreased by 40 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Yo Tambien. In addition to criminal libel and defamation laws, civil law defines moral damage as similar to defamation concerning harm to a persons feelings, affections, beliefs, dignity, honor, reputation, and privacy, according to the NGO Committee to Protect Journalists. The Interior Secretariat reaffirmed its commitment to protect refugee applicants even as the country experienced an unprecedented number of applicants. Petty crime occurs frequently in both tourist and non-tourist areas. - It's been estimated that 18% of all prisoners in Mexico City have lived in Iztapalapa. FENTANYL / 15 FEB 2023 . The midterms marked a large increase in female candidates. Last Updated: Reissued with updates to health information. Conditions in prisons and detention centers were often harsh and life threatening. In the June midterm elections, citizens voted for all members of the Chamber of Deputies, 15 governors, state legislators, and mayors across the country. Freedom of Association and the Right to Collective Bargaining, b. According to a 2019 National Child Labor Survey, the number of children ages five to 17 in child labor, including in hazardous household work, was 3.3 million, or approximately 11.5 percent of children in the country. The governments National Council of Norms and Labor Competencies certified law enforcement internal affairs investigators and created standard internal affairs training to promote transparency and accountability. Both the boys and their hairdresser trainers pocketed the government money and went about their lives, criminal or otherwise, as before. Women and pregnant people face many barriers when trying to access abortion, even when it is legal. The pension was 2,550 pesos ($125) every two months. The law criminalizes sharing, distributing, and publishing intimate sexual content (including photographs, audio, and videos) featuring individuals who have not explicitly given their consent, with penalties of up to six years in prison. In August Baja California and Yucatan passed laws banning LGBTQI+ conversion therapy. Additionally, the INE introduced quotas to promote minority representation, requiring political parties to nominate a certain number of candidates belonging to minority groups, including from indigenous, Afro-Mexican, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) communities, as well as persons with disabilities. From January to August the Mexican Commission to Assist Refugees (COMAR) received 77,559 applications for refugee status, a 41 percent increase from the same period in 2019, and anticipated that it would receive up to 120,000 applications in total by the end of the year. Violent crime, extortion, and gang activity are widespread in Zacatecas state. Rather than receiving daily wages once a week, as mandated by law, day laborers had to meet certain harvest quotas to receive the promised wage. Journalists and human rights defendersparticularly those who criticize public officials or expose the work of criminal cartelsoften face attacks, harassment, and surveillance by government authorities and criminal groups. Under past governments, charging the military with these tasks has contributed to serious cover-ups of human rights abuses. The 911 hotline received 139,554 calls reporting incidents of violence against women from January to June, an increase of 6 percent over the same months in 2020. However, authorities often fail to investigate allegations of torture. According to advocacy groups, no information was available concerning the criteria through which the government chooses media outlets for public advertising. In her more than 20 years in the industry, Dr. McEntire has become one of the most highly respected leaders in food safety . U.S. government employees may not travel to other areas of Sinaloa state. COMARs budget increased modestly in recent years but was not commensurate with the growth in refugee claims in the country. The law provides for the freedoms of peaceful assembly and association, and the government generally respected these rights, with some exceptions. U.S. government employees must adhere to the noted restrictions: Travelers may use Highways 2 and 2D to transit between Mexicali, Los Algodones, and San Luis Rio Colorado during daylight hours. On August 7, Yucatan governor Mauricio Villa announced the arrest of four police officers, but on August 14, a judge set them free due to a lack of evidence. In July the Sonora State Prosecutor Generals Office detained Rojos alleged killer. Low turnout invalidated the results. Travel for U.S. government employees is limited to the following areas with noted restrictions: U.S. government employees may not travel to other areas of Colima state. In 2019 the Prosecutor Generals Office opened a corruption investigation against Lozoya for receiving up to $10 million in bribes from the Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht. Federal authorities supported access to contraceptive methods, but states efforts varied widely. Use additional caution in areas outside of the frequented tourist areas, although petty crime occurs frequently in tourist areas as well. Failure to register births could result in the denial of public services such as education or health care. The Bicentennial Framework is unlikely to restore that. This will allow Mexico to increase its emissions while technically meeting its targets. The government increased efforts to target human smuggling organizations. On June 6, authorities arrested former Nayarit governor Roberto Sandoval and his daughter Lidy Alejandra Sandoval Lopez for corruption and money laundering. Subcontracting is allowed if it is used to perform specialized services unrelated to the main economic activity of businesses or public institutions. In May 2020 a constitutional amendment established the disability pension as a constitutional right, prioritizing children, indigenous, and Afro-Mexican persons with disabilities younger than age 64 who lived in poverty. InSight Crime's GameChangers 2022 looks back at the most consequential criminal stories across Latin America this year. The most common reason to remove content was defamation, followed by privacy and security. The law also provides for the rights of appeal and of bail in most categories of crimes. Lpez Obrador has openly opposed wind and solar energy production. As of September no alleged perpetrators of the disappearances had been convicted, and 78 of those initially accused were released due to lack of evidence, generally due to irregularities in their detention, including confessions obtained through torture. There are no restrictions on travel for U.S. government employees in Morelos state. Mexico is one of Latin America's most important security markets due to its size, leading industries, development, and total demand. The reforms prevent the registration of collective bargaining agreements known as protection contracts, which nonrepresentative unions often negotiated and signed without the knowledge of workers and undermined genuine collective bargaining. In October 2021, following a CRPD committee recommendation, the government publicly apologized to a man with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities who had been imprisoned for four years although there was no evidence he had committed a crime and a judge had found him unfit to stand trial, leaving him without the opportunity to defend himself.