Education International joins unions’ UN complaint on missing Mexican students
The United Nations Human Rights Council is preparing to hear the complaint filed by Education International and six affiliates on behalf of the 43 Mexican student teachers who disappeared more than two years ago.
Adding its name to the complaint on 6 February, Education International (EI) has joined its six affiliates, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the Confederation of Education Workers of the Argentine Republic, Brazil’s National Confederation of Education Workers, Unión Nacional de Educadores, Colegio de Profesores de Chile, and the Colombian Federation of Education Workers to demand answers to the yet unsolved violent events surrounding the Ayotzinapa Rural teachers’ College in Guerrero, Mexico, in September 2014.
The EI addendum was added to the original complaint letter filed 26 September 2016.
The complaint is scheduled to be addressed during the Human Rights Council Working Group on Communications, 13 – 17 February 2017 in Geneva, Switzerland.
“We at Education International reiterate our solidarity with the victims and their families, and the imperative for accountability and justice,” said EI General Secretary Fred van Leeuwen. “We call upon the United Nations Human Rights Council to expedite remedial action with the government of Mexico to prosecute those responsible and come forward with an attested record of the fate of the 43 disappeared young educators.”
The disappeared were men mostly in their 20s studying to become teachers. On September 26, they travelled on buses and vans from Guerrero to nearby Iguala for a protest about lack of funding for their school. They haven't been seen or heard from since.
With the support of over 750 documents submitted by various organisations, including, but not limited to, Amnesty International, the UNHCR, and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the unions are demanding that Mexican officials become more transparent and make details of the ongoing investigation public.
This is not the first time that EI has filed a complaint with the UN body. The procedure has previously been used to highlight human rights abuses in Iran, Turkey, Bahrain and Fiji.
