25% of the disappeared persons in Mexico are women, girls and adolescents

Mazatlán, Sin.- Until today in Mexico, more than 111 have been registered as missing persons, of which about 25%, 28 thousand, are women, girls and adolescents, the vast majority of them between the ages of 15 and 25 years old, revealed Karla Quintana Osuna.

Within the framework of the Third meeting of the National Technical Coordination for Harmonization and Application of the Alba Protocol, the national search commissioner pointed out that in the case of the disappearance of women, hypotheses of intrafamily violence, femicide and human trafficking are opened.

“In Mexico, unlike other countries, a disappeared person is anyone who is absent and who is presumed to be the victim of a crime; we look for them alive or also, if they are found dead, we have to take all measures to return them. home,” she said.

She also added that more than 160 thousand people have been located, the majority alive and in women, also the located age range of is between 15 and 25 years.

“What we would like and what we, who are the ones on the ground all the time, have to do is look at what the patterns are and why the women who are located were disappeared,” she added.

Harmonization of the Alba Protocol

In this context, Sonja Perick Krempl, general director of Search Actions of the CNB, highlighted that for two years they have been working jointly between experts, state search commissions, the prosecutor’s offices of the 32 federal entities and civil society, in the construction of a document that contains the minimum criteria for the construction of harmonization of Alba protocols.

“The Alba Protocol is an immediate reaction and coordination mechanism for the search and investigation of cases of disappearance of women, girls and adolescent women. From the technical committee we set out to align the various versions of the country’s Alba protocols with international standards in matter of search and investigation of disappeared persons and specialized measures for the protection of Human Rights with a gender approach,” she said.

The federal official stressed that this work was extended to any person who self-perceives as a woman, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

In Sinaloa

For her part, the state attorney, Sara Bruna Quiñones, emphasized that the first hours after a disappearance are crucial to find people alive and to protect their physical and psychological integrity.

For this, she pointed out, all the competent institutions in the country, from the three levels of government, in addition to academia and civil society, must be in the same frequency through an agreement for immediate attention and effective coordination.

“For this to happen, it is essential to standardize the protocols used in the investigation of all crimes related to sexual violence and homicides of women, which cannot be postponed in contexts where discrimination and gender violence prevail.”

She assured that in Sinaloa the Prosecutor’s Office has applied this protocol since February 2020 and since then the agents of the Public Ministry and FGE personnel immediately attend to the complaints that are presented due to the absence of their home, or for any reason, of women and girls.

The first meeting was held in Michoacán to present the Alba Protocol Harmonization project. In April 2022, the second national meeting was held in Morelos, where the first programmer of the minimum criteria was presented.

In this third meeting, held in Mazatlán, with the presence of representatives of the search commissions and the Prosecutor’s Office of other federal entities, the final draft will be presented to be approved and later institutionally incorporated into the National Search System.

Source: El Sol de Mazatlan