Alejandra Cartagena collaborates with the UN on a guide for families of missing persons

Ximena Torres

For several years, Alejandra Cartagena López has been supporting and demanding justice for disappeared persons in Mexico and their families. In September 2026, the lawyer took these experiences to Switzerland, where the United Nations Committee against Enforced Disappearances commemorated the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.

“We, the families, have forged paths where none existed before, and this includes the horror of clandestine graves. [...] We have done so not because it is our place to replace the State, but because for too long the State has failed to respond with the urgency, coordination, and effectiveness that the disappearance of people demands,” said the ITESO academic during her participation in the international event. Her message was shaped by the denunciations and perspectives of 32 collectives from Mexico and Central America with whom she met before traveling to the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

Cartagena's goal was to bring the stories of the victims closer to the UN, so he also brought letters written by family members searching for their loved ones and photographs of missing persons, including his mother, Leticia Galarza Campos, and his grandfather, David Jiménez Fragoso, both of whom disappeared in Mexico in 1978 and 1975, respectively.

Her experience as a daughter searching for her missing child is just one of several roles that led her to become Latin America's representative to the Committee against Enforced Disappearances. Cartagena is also an activist, coordinator of the National Citizen Council of the National Search System for Missing Persons in Mexico, and a professor at the Francisco Suárez, SJ University Center for Dignity and Justice (CUDJ) at ITESO. "I think I wear several hats that allow me to have a broad perspective," she says.

With that commitment, the academic presented several urgent issues regarding the disappearance crisis in Mexico at the UN. These included guarantees of safety for mothers to participate in the search for their children and differentiated attention for boys and girls, so that they are included in public policies for care and prevention.

Ultimately, each of the demands put forward by Cartagena was intended to recognize the loved ones and families searching for their missing children as indirect victims, subjects of rights, and key players in the design of institutional solutions. “We need the recommendations to move forward with the families, to leave Geneva and reach the communities,” she says.

We are still here: an instrument for the victims

Cartagena's demands align with Article 24 of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, which states: “The term 'victim' means the disappeared person and any natural person who has suffered direct harm as a result of an enforced disappearance. Each victim has the right to know the truth about the circumstances of the enforced disappearance, the progress and outcome of the investigation and the fate of the disappeared person.”

This principle guided the meeting commemorating the 20th anniversary of the convention, during which the initiative "We Are Still Here: Victims at the Center of the Human Rights Movement" was presented. The proposal consists of developing a practical guide to navigate the legal, financial, social, and educational obstacles that arise with the absence of a family member. For example, the difficulty of accessing a bank account, obtaining an identity card for a child, and other challenges faced by people worldwide.

In Mexico, these types of cases have been handled through the special declaration of absence, but Cartagena says that this legal instrument needs to be expanded because some institutions still do not understand it.

“Not all Mexican states have it (the special declaration of absence), [...] we also have cases where missing persons are dismissed from their jobs and their families are left without social security. We assisted in a case where a woman was undergoing cancer treatment when her husband disappeared, and she was left without treatment,” the lawyer explains.

The meeting between Cartagena and other activists from Sri Lanka, Sudan, Thailand, and Pakistan at the UN served to develop the initial drafts of the guide through working groups. They will remain involved in the project by providing technical feedback, while the Committee against Enforced Disappearances will consult with other families in different regions of the world until December 2028.

Enforcement tools

As with other international recommendations, for the guide to become an enforceable tool, it needs to include the direct participation of families, clear implementation pathways, and accountability indicators.

“That (the groups) know which authority is responsible, within what timeframe, how (their work) will be measured, and what mechanisms exist to document and report their non-compliance,” explains the academic from ITESO.

That is the relevance of international mechanisms: in the face of a lack of information, they offer clarity to victims regarding their rights and the obligations of the authorities. They have also been useful in highlighting disappearances and patterns of impunity as serious human rights violations, Cartagena states. And finally, they have driven legislative changes and the creation of institutions. A key example is the criminalization of femicide and the adoption of the Alba Protocol in Mexico following the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) ruling known as the “Cotton Field” case.

All of this is happening because of the determination of families, in which mothers, wives, and sisters continue to play a fundamental role, Cartagena adds. “Women continue to hold up the world. It sounds very dramatic, but in a world where they have chosen war, we have chosen memory and peace,” she concluded.