Background

Mexico is a country caught in multiple wars. Its context is so diverse and complex that it is hard to describe in a simplified way. To do so we usually turn to the figures on violence, impunity and poverty, and to the general human-rights situation in the country.

And yet Mexico is also, above all, a country of hope and resistance. Across its whole geography, the resolve of human-rights defenders, organisations, communities, peoples and nations sustains and renews the strength of the social fabric. Its -very- young, developing liberal democracy stands in contrast with centuries-old experiences of participation, organisation, representation and decision-making that keep reinventing themselves with constant creativity. Indigenous peoples, with their incredible resilience and social plasticity, are a striking example of this. Were it not for this social, ethical, political, cultural and epistemological richness, Mexico would be utterly devastated. And yet it resists: the efforts to transform the country and to make Life possible there exceed, and will keep exceeding, the scale of its horrors.

The struggle and determination to make the full exercise of human rights possible in Mexico has led defenders to recover ancestral knowledge of community organisation and the experiences of peoples in resistance, adapting and updating them, as well as to develop ever more sophisticated legal, political, security, social, economic and environmental capacities. And although we achieve great progress case by case, process by process, reality always seems to outpace us. In this sense, it is important to gauge all the work that remains to be done, all the challenges to overcome, while valuing the importance of every victory, however small. We need to understand the country’s infamy, ignominy, brutality and cruelty, and in the face of it, despite it, to choose joy as a political wager and an act of defiance.

The experience of human-rights defenders in Mexico allows us to affirm that one of the strategies to prevent or halt human-rights violations and to access the exercise or recognition of rights can be built from three elements: the legal, the social and the political path. Within this strategy it is essential to access the justice system, the institutions of the State as a whole, and international human-rights protection bodies when necessary; to strengthen the capacities and cohesion of the community fabric; and to peacefully occupy public space, so as to demand what is legally and humanly ours.

In a country where there are still public policies, plans, programmes and projects that violate human rights, and where the justice system promises impunity in practically every case brought before it, administrative procedures and strategic litigation alone are not enough to exercise the right of access to justice. It is also essential to link them to social action –individual, collective and community organisation and intervention– and political action –we insist, as the occupation of public space, beyond party representation– in order to influence the will and accountability of the relevant authorities.

Within political action, many Mexican human-rights defenders have recognised the possibilities opened up by coordinating efforts between defenders working in Mexico and those who act in solidarity at the international level, in this case from a member state of the European Union. The examples of solidarity ties that shared the drive to transform spaces sick with violence into opportunities and alternatives for peace; experiences for the right of access to justice, freedom and security, or the right of peoples to self-determination and autonomy; initiatives that inspire and nourish the actions of human-rights defenders in the Global North and South; shared efforts to protect life itself, are countless, and the results achieved were on many occasions exceptional. Some examples are:

solidarity actions, the efforts for Peace in Chiapas after the 1994 armed uprising, or the Global Day of Action for Ayotzinapa after the enforced disappearance of 43 students in 2014, to highlight just a couple;
information dissemination and awareness-raising work in EU member states –for the freedom or safety of a defender–;
advocacy actions in EU institutions or the UN System –the organisations that have taken part for years in the “High-Level Mexico–EU Human Rights Dialogue”, or those that have contributed to the “Universal Periodic Review” at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, bear witness to this–;
securing resources through the funding of international cooperation projects;
international accompaniment –the physical presence of observers– to deter violence against defenders and support social processes for the defence of rights;
temporary shelter programmes for human-rights defenders at risk, etc.

Out of these experiences a proposal emerged: let us work together, in solidarity, in a more organic and systematic way, to keep contributing to peace, freedom, democracy and justice in Mexico. Thus, aware of the importance of international support and the urgent need to strengthen the work for peace and the promotion and defence of human rights, defenders organised in eight networks for the promotion and defence of human rights in Mexico, one network with a Mesoamerican scope, and one network and six organisations in the European Union, asked ourselves: What more can we do with everything we already do, without duplicating efforts or spaces? What, and how, could we do better?

This process of dialogue and construction involves:

Red Nacional de Defensoras de Derechos Humanos en México (RNDDHM)
Iniciativa Mesoamericana de Mujeres Defensoras de Derechos Humanos (IM-Defensoras)
Red Nacional de Organismos Civiles de Derechos Humanos “Todos los Derechos para Todas y todos” (Red TDT)
Red por los Derechos de la Infancia en México (REDIM)
Espacio de Organizaciones de la sociedad Civil para la Protección de Personas Defensoras de Derechos Humanos y Periodistas (EOSC)
Grupo de Trabajo sobre Política Migratoria (GTPM)
Red de Incidencia EU-LAT
Brigadas Internacionales de Paz – México (PBI-México)
Servicio Internacional para la Paz (SiPaz)
Movimiento Sueco por la Reconciliación (SweFOR)
Transnational Institute (TNI)
Organización Mundial contra la Tortura (OMCT)
Asociación por la Paz y los Derechos Humanos Taula per Mèxic (TxM)

Those of us who make up this space share the same goals, and we know and confront the complexity of the context. We know that in Mexico the right to life is not guaranteed. That the right of access to justice –thorough, full, complete– is practically unattainable. That the right to freedom is always at risk. That the rights of Indigenous peoples are never secured. That everything is worse if you are a woman. That sexual or gender dissidence threatens the fragile prevailing masculinity, which always reacts with violence. That childhood does not count. That migrants are treated as a resource. We also know that the criminal economy is making its way at every level, and that everything, absolutely everything, can get worse.

We therefore set out to constitute ourselves as a meeting space to share information, analysis and initiatives for peace and human rights in Mexico, and more specifically, we decided to focus on two concrete outcomes: fostering communication processes and strengthening advocacy actions. We decided to keep working together, in solidarity, to help make a reality the goal that unites all the participating networks and organisations: the full exercise of human rights in Mexico.