Report of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions: Mission to Mexico, Christof Heyns (2014)

The Special Rapporteur was concerned about the situation in Mexico since 2007 when the military had been deployed to take on the increasingly powerful cartels in what it called a "war on drugs", in the course of which widespread extrajudicial execution were perpetrated by the security forces as well as the cartels often without accountability. 

Mexico faces significant challenges to protect the right to life. According to information provided by the Mexican authorities, 102.696 intentional homicides were committed from December 2006 to November 2012, as many as 70000 of these were drug-related killings (almost 70 percent). This is coupled with and indeed made possible by systematic and endemic impunity as according to the National Human Rights Commission, only around 1 to 2 percent of crimes, including homicides currently lead to conviction. 

Citation: Christof Heyns, 'Report of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions: Mission to Mexico' (2014) A/HRC/26/36/Add.1 

HRDP summary