The Executive Commission for the Attention of Victims: a decade of simulation
The year 2023 marked the tenth anniversary of the publication of the General Law on Victims (GLV), a law that sought to recognize the rights of victims of crimes and human rights violations in Mexico in order to provide them with comprehensive attention and reparation. Based on this law, the National System for Attention of Victims (NSAV) and the Executive Commission for the Attention of Victims (ECAV) were created to articulate the fulfillment of this task. In this context, Causa en Común conducted an investigation with the objective of analyzing the emergence, trajectory and functioning of the NSAV a decade after its creation, making visible its tensions and problems and understanding the current state of attention to victims, as well as providing recommendations for its improvement.
Among the main findings of the research are the following:
- Lack of clear definitions:
- There is a lack of an operational definition of “victim” in the glossary of the GLV, which contributes to the lack of results of the NSAV. Since the definition is broad and unclear, the potential universe of victims that the ECAV can serve is imprecise and, in practical terms, unmanageable.
- The lack of homologation in the criteria for registration and identification of the needs of the victims has allowed the resources for attention, assistance and reparation to be offered in a discretionary and uncoordinated manner.
- Lack of political commitment and institutional coordination:
- There is an absence of political will to make the System work. During this six-year term, President López Obrador has never convened the NSAV Plenary to review, design and implement the Annual Plan for the Attention of Victims. Furthermore, neither the Program for Attention of Victims nor the Regulations of the Law have been updated, thus lacking a clear strategy.
- A decade after the enactment of the Law, two states have not yet installed a State Executive Commission for Attention of Victims: Oaxaca and Campeche. In turn, three states have not homologated their local legislations with the last reform to the GLV in 2017: Campeche, Tlaxcala and Zacatecas.
- Without a functional NSAV, the ECAV has been limited to function as an isolated unit for the direct attention of victims, which depends on temporary agreements with other institutions. As of 2022, the ECAV has signed 102 agreements with other Mexican state institutions, of which only 69 remain in force. In addition, the ECAV it lacks agreements with crucial instances to achieve comprehensive reparation, such as the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Welfare, the National Institute of Migration or the Civil Registry.
- Decreasing resources:
- During this presidential term, key resources for victim attention have disappeared. The Fund for Aid, Assistance and Integral Reparation (FAAIR) was reduced from 500 million in 2018 to 430 million in 2019, until finally being eliminated in 2020.
- The ECAV’s human resources have also been stagnant. It’s legal advisory service for the attention of victims is overstretched. According to the Law, the ECAV should have at least 274 legal advisors. However, from 2018 to this year, the number of available advisors has remained limited to 123.
- A collapsed ECAV:
- Due to insufficient budget and human resources, the registration of victims to the National Registry of Attention to Victims (NRAV) has been strongly affected, preventing access to available resources for attention, assistance and reparation. Since 2019, the number of victims registered in the NRAV registers a notorious decrease. If in 2019, 10,831 victims were registered and provided care, in 2022 only 6,888 managed to join the registry, representing a decrease of 36%.
- The support provided by the ECAV is insufficient to guarantee comprehensive reparations to victims. In 2022 the ECAV granted 13,034 aid and reparation measures. Only 20 of these measures were aimed at reparations for human rights violations. The vast majority of the support, although it can be useful and valuable for the victims who receive it, is directed only to solve their most immediate needs, being the support for transportation (36%), food (33%) and lodging (30%) the ones that concentrate almost all of the resources granted.
- From 2013 to March 2023, the ECAV has accumulated a total of 405 complaints submitted to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), of which 302 have been classified as human rights violations. The increase is notorious as of the current presidential term. If between 2013 and 2018 the NHRC received 64 complaints, in the first four years of the current federal administration it has received 204. In 2022 alone, 60 complaints against the ECAV were filed before the NHRC.
- Proposals:
- To create adequate definitions within the glossary of the General Victims Law (GVL), to differentiate between victims of crimes in general, victims of high impact crimes and victims of human rights violations, in order to delimit the universe of responsibility of the NSAV and the cases in violation of victims’ rights that can be attended by the ECAV and the State Commissions for Attention to Victims.
- To define in the GVL a system of responsibilities and sanctions that can guarantee the commitment and effective participation of federal and local institutions for the correct functioning of the NSAV. This will allow to stop overburdening the ECAV as the only instance dedicated to the attention and integral reparation of victims, as well as facilitating its functions of coordination and revision of the national victims’ policy.
- To facilitate registration in the NRAV by updating the GVL’s, and to have a public version of these registry that will allow to oversight of the work of the ECAV and the State Commissions in order to provide certainty to users.
- To review the current legislation in order to avoid any duplicated functions between the ECAV and those performed by other victim assistance institutions, such as the NHRC, the Prosecutor’s Offices and the Secretariats of Security.
- To relaunch the NSAV as the coordinating body for the victims’ strategy, giving the ECAV full autonomy and the capacity to convene its Plenary.
- To provide the ECAV with tools so that it can promote collective and symbolic reparation mechanisms that involve guarantees of non-repetition and that contemplate mechanisms for public demonstration of the authorities’ commitment to victims’ rights.
- To provide the ECAV and the State Commissions with multi-annual budgets that provide certainty in the attention to victims. This includes recovering the FAAIR as a mechanism for aid, assistance and reparation resources to be stable, as well as providing an expansion of the administrative budget to give adequate attention to victims.
- Since comprehensive reparation must include truth, justice and guarantees of non-repetition for the victims, to initiate a broad process of transitional justice in which all the agencies of the Mexican State participate.
- The implementation of mechanisms against impunity with the help of the United Nations for the investigation of crimes and human rights violations committed on a large scale.
- The installation of a large Truth Commission, modeled on the best lessons learned from international experience on the subject.
