Mexico advances missing persons search efforts and professional certification

In Mexico, efforts to address the crisis of missing persons have seen both institutional coordination and formal recognition of the skills held by search collectives. In Ciudad Juárez, the State Attorney General's Office, through the Executive Commission for Victim Assistance (CEAVE), organized the State Forum for the Integral Care of Families of Missing Persons. The forum aimed to create a safe space for dialogue between institutional representatives and victims' families to coordinate search efforts and investigations.

Simultaneously, Ceci Patricia Flores and her daughter Milagros Flores have become the first family members of missing persons in Mexico to receive official certification from the National Council for Normalization and Certification of Labor Competencies (CONOCER). They obtained the EC1542 certification, which formally recognizes competencies in searching for missing or unlocated persons, including data collection, field work, and context analysis. The duo aims to encourage more families to undergo this training to professionalize their search efforts.