UNITED NATIONS, June 16 -- "Mexico is a stable country," foreign minister Patricia Espinosa told the Press on Wednesday. Inner City Press had asked her about attacks on police and Mexico City's control over territory by armed groups with members under the age of eighteen. Earlier, a Mexican spokesman had said that the country is not a case of armed conflict, that whatever conflict exists is a purely internal matter. But the level of killing exceeds that of many of the situations on the agenda of the UN Security Council, on which Mexico serves for the rest of 2010.
Inner City Press asked UNICEF and Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN's envoy on children and armed conflict, what they do about Mexican armed groups' use of under-aged fighters, and about the shooting of a 15 year old Mexican by US border guards earlier this month.
Ms. Coomaraswamy said she didn't see that death, in Ciuidad Juarez, as relevant to her mandate. She said that armed conflict, according to her Office and presumably the the UN, must have a "political dimension."
So, Inner City Press asked, if the groups in Mexico began to refer to corruption in the capital, would this be a political dimension?
How is the increasingly deranged and decentralized Lord's Resistance Army a political group?
They want to seize state power, Coomaraswamy said. And they assert the rights of the Acholi people.
But the LRA hasn't been in Uganda in quite some time. Its recruits are not Acholi. And Mexican armed groups, including drug gangs, seek to control the machinery of government, which if not controlled would attack and arrest them. So what is the difference?
UNICEF later provided a more detailed answer:
To: Inner City Press
From: @unicef.org
Date: Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 10:17 PM
According to international humanitarian law, Mexico is not in an armed conflict situation. Nevertheless, the increased levels of violence reported in the country have put security issues at the center of the public agenda.
Some information on UNICEF programs in Mexico
UNICEF Mexico develops a wide range of initiatives that encourage active youth participation in their educational setting to help overcoming situations of risks.
To this end, UNICEF Mexico has supported the national Construye-T initiative since 2008, whose purpose is to encourage participation by young people so that they stay in school, successfully overcome the situations of risk to which they are exposed and build their own life project.
Construye-T is one example of public policy that focuses on youth and the construction of citizenship in which government, the educational community, civil society organizations and international agencies, participate and positions young people in a leading role.
The Construye-T is being implemented in 1,696 senior high schools nationwide, reaching 961,154 young people between 15 and 18 years old.
Protecting the rights of unaccompanied migrant children and adolescents is a key priority of UNICEF in México.
UNICEF actively participates in the Inter-Institutional Panel on Unaccompanied Child and Adolescent Migrants and Migrant Women, which brings together some 17 institutions ranging from public authorities to international agencies. These joint efforts have resulted in the development of a new model to protect unaccompanied migrant adolescents and children and in securing an increased national budget allocation in Congress in 2009 for its appropriate implementation. As part of this model, UNICEF has supported the establishment of a special corps of Child Protection Officers.
More than 30,000 adolescents and children are repatriated yearly to or from Mexico. Over 20,000 of them now count on a system for their protection, which includes immediate care, specialized attention and separate accommodation from adults, communication with their families and safe return to their communities of origin.
UNICEF also works closely with the government to strengthen child protection measures on every level of the society. This kind of advocacy work includes technical support to the government to ensure that children's rights are respected.
Yeah -- "the increased levels of violence reported in the country have put security issues at the center of the public agenda." Watch this site.And see, www.innercitypress.com/mex1stable061610.html
