Intervention by the Delegation of Mexico at the 15th session of the
Forum on Minority Issues
Segment "Review: normative frameworks and the incorporation of the Declaration
on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and
Linguistic Minorities at the United Nations" - Thursday 1 December 2022,
10:30-13:00
Maximum time: 2 minutes
Thank you, President.
The theme of this Forum provides an opportunity to reflect on the
normative frameworks and the incorporation of the Declaration on the
Rights of Persons Belonging to Minorities.
For the Mexican State, the right to equality and non-discrimination is
fundamental to guarantee the exercise of all rights for all persons,
whether or not they belong to any kind of minority.
In this regard, and by way of exchange of practices, we would like to
share that Mexico has a Federal Law to Prevent and Eliminate
Discrimination. This law prohibits all forms of discrimination based on
ethnic or national origin, skin tone, culture, religion, physical
appearance, genetic characteristics and language, all of which could
have an impact on the exercise of rights by national, ethnic, religious
and linguistic minorities.
Mexico
also
has
a
National
Council
for
the
Prevention
of
Discrimination, which has the power to propose legislative reforms to
protect or guarantee the right to non-discrimination. In relation to
this power, for example, the Mexican Constitution was reformed in 2019
to recognise Afro-Mexican people and communities, as well as their
individual and collective rights. Constitutional recognition was
accompanied by measures to generate statistical information. In 2017,
the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (National Institute
of Statistics and Geography) estimated that 2.9% of the national
population identifies as Afro-descendant.
President:
Legislative advances, reinforced with the production of information,
make it possible to generate diagnoses that contribute to the design of
public policies with a focus on equality and non-discrimination, in
order to guarantee the exercise of all rights for all persons,
including those belonging to minority groups, in line with the
objectives of the Declaration.