The National Search Commission (CNB) is a Mexican commission which was established in 2018 for the purpose of finding the more than 100,000 missing people in Mexico, who have been victims of

extrajudicial Extrajudicial punishment is a punishment for an alleged crime or offense which is carried out without legal process or supervision by a court or tribunal through a legal proceeding. Politically motivated Extrajudicial punishment is often a fe ...

killings, torture and enforced disappearances. Often, the victim's body is burned in an attempt to ("enforce disappearance") destroy all evidence.

History

The commission was established in 2018 and the commissioner at the helm was Karla Quintana from February 2019 until her resignation in August 2023. The commission has a budget of $22 million and a staff of 89 as of December 2020. Over 1000 clandestine

mass grave A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may Unidentified decedent, not be identified prior to burial. The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of exec ...

s have been found in Mexico and families are often tasked with having to investigate

missing person A missing person is a person who has disappeared and whose status as Life, alive or Death, dead cannot be confirmed as their location and condition are unknown. A person may go missing through a voluntary disappearance, or else due to an accide ...

s without much help from the

Mexican Police The Federal Police (), formerly known as the (Federal Preventive Police) and sometimes referred to in the U.S. as "Federales", was a Mexican national police force formed in 1999. In 2019 it was incorporated into the National Guard and operated u ...

. The National Search Commission has worked with forensic teams and in 2022, were searching through thousands of human remains in

Nuevo Laredo Nuevo Laredo () is a city in the Municipality of Nuevo Laredo in the Mexican List of states of Mexico, state of Tamaulipas. The city lies on the banks of the Rio Grande, across from Laredo, Texas, Laredo, United States. The 2010 census popula ...

, at a place authorities call a

cartel A cartel is a group of independent market participants who collaborate with each other as well as agreeing not to compete with each other in order to improve their profits and dominate the market. A cartel is an organization formed by producers ...

'extermination' site. According to the Human Rights Watch, Mexico has had a history of extrajudicial killings, torture, and "enforced disappearances", which began during the

Mexican Dirty War The Mexican Dirty War () was the Mexican Theater (warfare), theater of the Cold War, an internal conflict from the 1960s to the 1980s between the Mexican Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)-ruled government under the presidencies of Gustav ...

when an estimated 1,200 people disappeared. The disappearances were carried out by Mexico's government forces. This has continued throughout the

Mexican drug war The Mexican drug war is an List of ongoing armed conflicts, ongoing Asymmetric warfare, asymmetric armed conflict between the Federal government of Mexico, Mexican government and various Drug cartel#Mexico, drug trafficking syndicates. When the ...

, with drug cartels and organized crime groups perpetrating the crimes, sometimes with help from the police. The War on drugs is a global campaign, led by the

U.S. federal government The Federal Government of the United States of America (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States. The U.S. federal government is composed of three distinct branches: legislative, execut ...

, of

drug prohibition The prohibition of drugs through sumptuary legislation or religious law is a common means of attempting to prevent the recreational use of certain intoxicating substances. An area has a prohibition of drugs when its government uses the for ...

military aid Military aid is aid which is used to assist a country or its people in its defense efforts, or to assist a poor country in maintaining control over its own territory. Many countries receive military aid to help with counter-insurgency efforts. Mi ...

, and

military intervention Interventionism, in international politics, is the interference of a state or group of states into the domestic affairs of another state for the purposes of coercing that state to do something or refrain from doing something. The intervention ca ...

, with the aim of reducing the

illegal drug trade The illegal drug trade, drug trafficking, or narcotrafficking is a global black market dedicated to the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of drug prohibition, prohibited drugs. Most jurisdictions prohibitionism, prohibit trade, exce ...

in the United States. The commission's main responsibility is accounting for and finding Mexico's missing people. The number of missing people ranged from 79,000 in 2020, to 92,000 in 2021. On February 28, 2022, the Associated Press stated the official number was 98,356 and other sources estimated there were nearly 100,000 missing. By May, 2022, the number was officially at more than 100,000. In April 2022, the Commission stated there are more than 20,000 missing women and that half of those women are from

Nuevo León Nuevo León, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Nuevo León, is a Administrative divisions of Mexico, state in northeastern Mexico. The state borders the Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, Zacatecas, and San Luis Potosí, San Luis ...

. a state in the Northeast region of Mexico.

Duties of the CNB

The functions of the National Search Commission include creating a record of the missing, and working with teams to find the missing.

References

External links

University of Minnesota - Human rights program
{{DEFAULTSORT:National Search Commission Law of Mexico

History

Duties of the CNB

See also

References

External links