In early March, Mexico’s undersecretary for human rights, population and migration, Arturo Medina Padilla, publicly acknowledged the Mexican state’s responsibility for the disappearances and murders of seven women and girls in Ciudad Juarez from 1995 to 2003. The statement marked the Mexican government’s compliance with recommendations issued by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in a case brought by relatives of the seven victims.
“We recognize that the Mexican State violated the fundamental right of these girls and women to life,” Padilla said at a public ceremony at a victims’ memorial in Juarez. “Not only did the authorities fail to protect them, but rather, in many cases, it was the authorities that perpetrated or tolerated the violence.”
The problem of femicide—or the murder of a woman or girl because of their gender—in Juarez has attracted less attention in recent years than at the peak of media coverage in the mid-2010s. But despite the Mexican state’s belated acknowledgement of its past failures, the problem has not gone away. To the contrary, between 2017 and 2019, Ciudad Juarez had 39 femicide cases, with 25 new cases in 2023, making it once again the deadliest Mexican city for women. The total number of femicides is likely much higher, as most murders of women and girls are not legally classified as femicides due to the high burden of proof.