Deputies approve the creation of the National Center for Human Identification: What tasks will it have?

by unanimous votethe Chamber of Deputies approved on Tuesday the draft decree creating the National Center for Human Identification.

The initiative, voted in favor by the 489 deputies in San Lázaro, points out that the Government of Mexico has assumed as a priority the search for disappeared persons and, in the event that they are found dead, their identification.

What tasks will this center be responsible for?

• The body will have as a strategy the generalized search for people from a massive approach.
• It will apply a hybrid approach so that the bodies and human remains of unidentified people found in mass graves are treated correctly.
• Center will prepare experts in the identification and recovery of bodies that are in the custody of prosecutors and local forensic medical services.
• The CNIH will have the task create a multidisciplinary forensic system focused on the identification of missing persons, as well as coordinating and executing search strategies.
• Note: this center will not supply the responsibilities of the forensic services of the public prosecutor’s offices.
• The initiative indicates that this body intends to guarantee Mexicans the right to search, to identification, to the truth and, eventually, influence the right to justice.
• The document indicates that the body would contemplate in its tasks the participation of relatives of disappeared persons, collectives and civil organizations.
• The CNIH will be attached to the National Search Commission.

To be official, the initiative now needs the support of the Senate, where it will be sent after Tuesday’s vote in San Lázaro.

The crisis of the disappearance of people in Mexico throws up shocking data, such as the fact that it would take 120 years to identify the bodies of all Mexicans under that condition, according to the Committee Against Enforced Disappearances (CED) of the United Nations Organization (UN).

That figure, added the group, does not take into account the new disappearances that are deported in the country.

According to the committee, there are currently more than 52,000 unidentified deceased people who lie in mass graves, forensic services, universities and shelter centers.

announced that “in the current conditions it would be necessary to 120 years to identify them (people), without counting the new bodies that are added every day”.