Abstract:
Disability Rights International (DRI) has conducted a two-year investigation into the treatment of children and adults with mental disabilities in Mexico City and finds a pattern of egregious and widespread human rights violations. Contrary to Mexico’s obligations under international human rights law–which recognize the right of people with disabilities to be free of torture and improper detention–Mexico does not provide support to families or adults with disabilities that would allow them to live as part of the community. Despite the fact that they have committed no crime, children and adults with disabilities are locked up and segregated from society. In Mexico City, having a disability can mean a life of detention. Even worse, DRI’s investigation has uncovered the existence of a “blacklist” of particularly abusive institutions that the Mexico City authorities are aware of yet they permit these facilities to operate...As part of this investigation, DRI has visited five of 25 facilities on the blacklist...We observed children and adults locked in cages, tied down or left permanently in cribs, and living in squalor. The director of the facility reported that women and girls in the facility were sterilized because he could not protect them from sexual abuse. When DRI returned nearly a year later in 2015 with the assistance of the Mexico City Human Rights Commission, we found that DIF had taken no action and abuses had not been remedied. In addition, we learned that some detainees were placed in the facility with no legal identity papers, and some of the women were being repeatedly sexually abused in the facility by staff and others. [CVRL Note: executive summary in Spanish available at end of this document. See also DRI reports on human rights of people with disabilities in Mexico from 2012, 2010, 2000.] (Author Text)