With this special bulletin, PBI aims to provide information on the process to achieve a governmental protection mechanism that can guarantee the physical and psychological integrity and the ongoing work of Mexican HRDs. Unless HRDs have sufficient political space and safety guarantees to be able to promote social change, Mexico's democratic transition will be seriously compromised. A protection mechanism is therefore both urgent and necessary.

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Peace Brigades International (PBI) Mexico would like to express its concern for the safety of staff and residents of the migrants' shelter "Digna Frontera" in Piedras Negras, Coahuila run by Father José Guadalupe Valdes, who are at risk after a staff member was attacked and threatened on Monday 9 May.

On the 30th of April, 2008, the small community of Santo Domingo Ixcatlán, located in the Mixteca region of the State of Oaxaca, southern Mexico, was shaken by the news of a triple homicide. Amnesty International reported that dozens of armed men headed by the former Mayor of Ixcatlán, Freddy Eucario Morales Arias, brutally murdered three members of the community: Gustavo Castañeda Hernández, Melesio Martínez Robles and Inocencio Medina Bernabé.

PBI has accompanied human rights defenders who have been attacked or who are under threat over the last 30 years across a variety of countries. We respond to petitions for help made by people and civil society organisations who request international accompaniment whilst carrying out non-violent work in promoting and defending human rights, particularly when those human rights have been violated or when they are under threat.

Washington, DC., 4 April 2011 – During its final period of sessions, which ends today, the IACHR announced the creation of a Rapporteurship on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders. The Rapporteur will be Commissioner José de Jesús Orozco Henríquez, from Mexico.