Mexico's Prosecutor Adopts New Strategy After UN Committee

Mexico's Attorney General, Ernestina Godoy, announced a new Strategic Plan for the Administration of Justice on April 17, 2026. The move came just days after the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) activated Article 34 of the convention, referring Mexico's situation to the UN General Assembly due to well-founded evidence of widespread, systematic enforced disappearances constituting crimes against humanity.

Godoy publicly acknowledged that for years the state's response to complex criminal phenomena had been "fragmented and insufficient." The new plan prioritizes the investigation of disappearances, femicides, and extortion. It states that success will no longer be measured by the volume of investigation files opened or closed, but by a coordinated effort against what it calls "macro-criminality" structures.

International Pressure and a Historic Decision

The CED's decision to trigger Article 34 created a important international space to demand more coordinated responses to Mexico's crisis of disappearances and the structural impunity affecting victims and their families. According to the source, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) had formally requested this action in February 2025, based on over a decade of documentation and advocacy conducted alongside Mexican organizations and victim collectives.

For ten years, FIDH has documented crimes against humanity in states including Coahuila, Veracruz, Nayarit, and Baja California. It has consistently urged federal and local prosecutors to abandon isolated, case-by-case investigations in favor of methodologies that identify patterns, links between cases, chains of command, and broader criminal structures.

Documentation of Systemic Failures

FIDH's advocacy included publishing two reports on the disappearances of women. One focused on disappearances linked to human trafficking in the State of Mexico, while another detailed deficiencies in the authorities' response to the disappearances of women and girls in Guerrero. These reports were complemented by an advocacy mission in November 2025 with Idheas and the Mexican Team of Forensic Anthropology (EMAF).

Key recommendations from that mission included the need to investigate disappearances, human trafficking, and femicide in an articulated manner, while strengthening coordination between specialized prosecutor's offices. The FIDH states that the Attorney General's public recognition of the limitations of the fragmented approach, and the announcement of a strategy based on inter-institutional coordination, represents a significant advance in addressing concerns raised for years by FIDH, its partners, and victim groups.

The Path Forward and Necessary Conditions

While FIDH welcomes the announcements, it shows that meaningful change will require political will, adequate resources, and sustained international accompaniment. The organization expects the promised reforms to materialize and for Mexico's investigative methodology to evolve toward an approach that guarantees dignified access to justice for victims and their loved ones.

This new approach must lead to the identification of patterns, recognition of the frequent collusion between public servants and organized crime, and in some cases, the existence of crimes against humanity. FIDH states this should contribute to sanctioning the highest-ranking perpetrators, dismantling major criminal structures, and significantly reducing enforced disappearances and femicides in the country. FIDH will continue to closely monitor the implementation of these reforms.