Mexico

Executive Summary

Mexico, which has 32 states, is a multiparty federal republic with an elected president and bicameral legislature. In 2012 President Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party won election to a single six-year term in elections observers considered free and fair. Citizens elected members of the Senate in 2012 and members of the Chamber of Deputies in 2015. Observers considered the June 2016 gubernatorial elections free and fair.

Civilian authorities generally maintained effective control over the security forces.

The most significant human rights issues included involvement by police, military, and other state officials, sometimes in coordination with criminal organizations, in unlawful killings, disappearances, and torture; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions in some prisons; arbitrary arrests and detentions; intimidation and corruption of judges; violence against journalists by government and organized criminal groups; violence against migrants by government officers and organized criminal groups; corruption; lethal violence and sexual assault against institutionalized persons with disabilities; lethal violence against members of the indigenous population and against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex persons; and lethal violence against priests by criminal organizations.

Impunity for human rights abuses remained a problem, with extremely low rates of prosecution for all forms of crimes.