On July 20, the Peace Brigades International-Mexico Project shared this statement from the Office in Mexico of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN-DH) on the murder of Gladys Aranza Ramos Gurrola.

UN-DH Representative in Mexico Guillermo Fernández-Maldonado says: “The murder of Ms. Aranza Ramos reminds us of the plight of the families of missing persons in Mexico. Not only do they suffer the pain of absence and uncertainty, but they investigate and search for their missing relatives, facing risks they should not take.”

Mexico News Daily reports: “Gladys Aranza Ramos Gurrola, 28, was abducted from her home and shot dead [on July 15]. She had been searching for her husband, Brayan Omar Celaya Alvarado, since he went missing in December 2020.”

“The couple had a 1-year-old child.”

That article adds: “Ramos was a member of Madres Buscadoras, or Searching Mothers, a group of around 1,200 people that has taken up the search for the missing victims of drug cartels in the absence of official efforts.”

The UN-DH notes: “The disappeared persons should never have missed their families, but after their disappearance, it must be the state institutions that carry out the immediate search with the maximum of the resources available to locate the person alive. When a state fails to fulfill this duty, the families of missing persons are placed at risk.”

PBI-Mexico has most recently accompanied the work of the Paso del Norte Human Rights Centre. For more on that, please see: PBI-Mexico shares Canal 44 TV report on the search for the disappeared by two human rights organizations in Ciudad Juarez.

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