translated from Spanish: Segob doesn’t know how many bodies there are unidentified in Mexico

Although speaking about the problems of the disappeared, both President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and other officials of his government have given several times the number of 26000 bodies unidentified in forensics across the country, the Ministry of the Interior (SEGOB) recognizes that it is an estimate and that there is no single database to know the exact figure.
In response to requests for information, the unit replied at the end of last March that it does not have a database with that information and personnel of the Sub-Secretariat of Human Rights confirmed to the political Animal that these are estimates.
This Tuesday, the under-Secretary of Human Rights, Alejandro Encinas, presented the first official report on clandestine graves, and criticized in general the management that was made in previous governments of the information on missing, as he said that They minimized and hid the data, or even mixed up cases of disappearances in homicide statistics. That is why it also said that a new national register of Missing Persons will be built, because there is no reliable information.
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He clarified that the human remains recovered in clandestine graves are apart from the “26000 bodies unidentified in forensic services.” But that fact, as explained by transparency, is not corroborated.
“It is worth pointing out that these are estimates, which were submitted by the work being carried out to comply with the General Law on the enforced disappearance of persons, disappearance by individuals and the system National Search for Persons (LGDFPFPSNBP), and its legal instruments that it mandates, “the Sub-secretariat said in its reply and added that the joint and coordinated work of all the competent authorities involved in the issue is needed to Unify a single database.
The law of enforced Disappearance, published in 2017, mandated that, among other tools, a national registry of deceased and unidentified persons was created by the then procurator General of the Republic (now the Prosecutor’s office, FGR). However, this is one of the pending of the law, and during the new government, Segob is who has led the baton on the issue of missing.
In its response to the request for information, the secretariat highlighted as advances the actions of registration made by the National Commission for the Search for missing Persons (CNBP), as the report presented on 17 January by its then titular, Roberto Cabrera.
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However, Cabrera — who came from the previous administration and resigned to elect a new Commissioner in this Government — said in that report that the official updated number of unidentified cadavers was 36708, according to platform data Mexico.
Segob also noted that data from the CNBP and platform Mexico are “preliminary figures” and that we must be cautious not to overlook that they are data that are concentrated from systems or databases of different institutions.
He also responded that standardized protocols across the country are needed in the face of Information failures and act in states:
“It is from the general knowledge that most of the federative entities lack forensic services and of protocols of identification of bodies and skeletal remains, so it will work in a national Plan of exhumations and forensic identification in order to have a Exact figure and be able to disaggregate the figure that we have of missing in the country, “he explained.
On the other hand, the National Search Commission, attached to Segob, also responded to the request for information on unidentified bodies in the country, but it justified that it is not among its functions to have such data because it corresponds to another dependency.
“The national registry of deceased and unidentified persons is the register that concentrates and contains forensic information processed from the location, recovery, identification and final destination of the remains of unidentified persons and other information Relevant to its subsequent identification, integrated with the information provided by the competent authorities, the Federation and the federal entities, is in charge of the attorney General of the Republic and is part of the national Data Bank Forensics, “he explained.
As already stated, one of the pending compliance with the law is precisely the creation of that databank and the respective record of unidentified.
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Original source in Spanish