Protecting Victims of Disappearances Committed by Organised Criminal Groups: State Responsibility in International Human Rights Law and the Experiences of Human Rights Practitioners in Mexico.

In this thesis, I explore the protective capacity of International Human Rights Law (IHRL) vis-à-vis victims of disappearances committed by organised criminal groups (OCG), and their relatives. To do so, I combine doctrinal legal research with qualitative research on the particular situation of disappearances in the context of the so-called ‘war on drugs’ in Mexico and the experiences of human rights practitioners engaged with this topic. My research departs from the issue of non-state actors as perpetrators of human rights violations in international law, specifically disappearances, and the question of how state responsibility for such acts can be determined. By focusing specifically on OCG as a non-state actor, this research adds not just to scholarship on non-state actors and disappearances more generally, but also to incipient international legal scholarship on the issue of organised crime and international law. Moreover, the combination of two disciplinary lenses can contribute to discussions around methodology in human rights research. Finally, the thesis provides insight into the complexity of the ongoing crisis of disappearances in Mexico.

Based on an analysis of current jurisprudence of the European and Inter-American human rights courts, I argue that from a doctrinal perspective the IHRL framework provides avenues for protecting victims of disappearances committed by OCG by holding states responsible for their failure to prevent such acts. However, when contrasted with the Mexican reality, it becomes apparent that such responsibility cannot fully capture the intricacy of state-crime relations, thereby perpetuating the legal fiction of separability between ‘state’ and ‘crime’. This in turn can facilitate denial by the state of its overall responsibility for failing to protect its population, especially where such a failure is intentional. Consequently, I argue that there is a need to further explore possibilities of developing a concept of ‘gross state negligence’ as a form of state criminality that fundamentally erodes the protection of human rights, thereby allowing seemingly never-ending spirals of violence to emerge.