Far from the high expectations generated at its creation [in the spring of 2013], the Executive Commission for Attention to Victims (CEAV) faces a long list of problems inside and outside its institutional structure that keep it virtually paralyzed amid the country's severe human rights crisis, where the number of victims grows daily.
At the end of 2015, the agency had attended to just 127 cases. However, it presented a 97 percent underspending of its 1.28 billion pesos [71.6 million USD] budget reported for the Fund for Aid, Assistance and Comprehensive Compensation [established under the General Victims Law].
In addition, the ''growing bureaucratization'' (recognized even by some commissioners) and staff shortages—for some time the agency has been working without three members of the full Commission—have not only prevented the National Registry of Victims from being completed, but work is accumulating inside an incomplete institutional structure.
Added to this, as a result of the "budgetary adjustments'' ordered by the Secretariat of the Treasury, a 20 percent downsizing of its workforce is now taking place. This cut will increase the workload for the agency's remaining 450 employees. In just the Office of the Federal Counsel, which is one of the CEAV's pillars, a group of scarcely 60 lawyers serves more than 7,000 cases.
This situation is beginning to generate suspicion and distrust among the organizations that support victims who turn to the institution that went into operation two years ago. There have already been several protests, including one held a year ago by the group María Herrera Family Members in Search, which led the Commission to close its doors for several hours.
Specialists and representatives from several human rights groups and organizations criticize that in all this time the CEAV has not constructed specific and effective programs for care of victims. They are even beginning to position the program as more like a "kind of welfare institution'' with "discretional" use of economic resources, since it requires ''docility'' from those affected in order to be able to receive support under the law.
In resource management, Silvano Cantú, human rights specialist, says that
''there is a black hole that is neither audited nor overseen by victims."
In April 2015, Cantú resigned as Director General of Connection on the Commission, denouncing the lack of autonomy, because the institution was on track to become an ''agency administrator of pain and outrage''.
Fernando Rios, with the All Rights for Everyone Network [Red Todos los Derechos para Todos], says that in a large swath of society there is clear disappointment over the CEAV's poor operation, which "is not even remotely'' like what was designed in the law, and much less than victims expected, because everything points to a "chain of pretense''.
Both specialists believe it is necessary to revise the General Victims Law with the goal of
"streamlining the bureaucracy. But also establishing clear procedures with strict deadlines and penalties for noncompliance, such that political conditions might not divert attention from those affected.''They consider that the lack of three of the seven commissioners is merely a sign that the Mexican State does not have human rights or care of victims as a priority. Spanish original