Development: On 11 December the representative of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Mexico, Jan Jařab, said that the government led by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador could fall into “committing the same mistakes” as it predecessors with its proposed new national security strategy.
Significance: Improving public security is one of López Obrador’s main pledges. However, the ‘peace and national security plan’ that he has proposed to implement has come under criticism by many in Mexico, who argue that it does not represent a significant shift from the strategies pursued so far given that it still largely relies on the use of the armed forces to combat criminality. Jařab has now added his voice to this chorus of criticism, increasing the pressure on López Obrador to review his plan.
- The peace and national security plan has as one of its main axes the creation of new security force, the national guard, that will have national jurisdiction and would initially be made up of members of the armed forces. But this has been heavily criticised by local human rights group, which complain that it would represent the perpetuation of the militarisation of the public security in Mexico and that this would do little to reduce violence and instead lead to an increase in human rights abuses committed by the security forces.
- Yesterday Jařab backed the criticisms levelled against the new security plan. Speaking before Mexico’s federal congress, Jařab said: “The national guard, as it has been proposed, will only constitute an extension of the paradigm of using the military to provide public security”. Noting that, in essence, this is the same strategy pursued by the two previous administrations led by Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) and Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-December 2018), and that this has only fuelled the violence, Jařab said that there is no justification for continuing with this policy.
- Jařab also appeared to dismiss López Obrador’s assurances that his national security plan will succeed where previous governments have failed because it would be better implemented. “What guarantees are there that the results will be different to those obtained under Calderón or Peña Nieto?”, Jařab asked rhetorically.
Looking Ahead: López Obrador’s interior minister, Alfonso Durazo, yesterday said that the implementation of the peace and national security plan will produce tangible results within three years. However, in a sign that the López Obrador administration is under pressure to deliver results sooner, yesterday opposition federal deputies noted that in the first 10 days of López Obrador’s presidency, 363 murders have already been recorded - more than in the first ten days of the Calderón and Peña Nieto terms.
