ANOTHER REFORM TO REDESING THE NATIONAL SECURITY LAW

by Frank Osorio

It is true that Mexico right now has been going through a dificult times, in terms of National Security, the war against drug cartels still on the field, but something is needed to win this war.

That is the reason why this week the reforms to the National Security Law will be voted on the Senate. If aproved, it will constitute a great advance that would redesing the national strategy to cambat organized crime in full respect of human rights, while ensuring judicial security for the armed forces.

The goal of this reform is to let the goverment lead the war on organized crime with greater efficiency and legitimacy throguh the creation of a legal mechanism that would regulate the deployment of armed troops in order to guarantee human rights and individual liberties at all times in Mexico, in accordance with the recent constitucional reform passed on Human Rights.
Another aspect that will change is new mechanisms to promote coordination between federal forces and civil authorities, while establishing operational and temporal guidelines in order to allow military forces to participate in police operations.

This new disposition would permit the intervention of municipalities and state governments or congresses in order to request the deployment of military troops.

The next step will be on September during the next congressional session, where the Senate will discuss a reform to ensure that the soldiers who committed serious human rights violations would be judged by civil authorities, with the intention of attending to the demands of the citizenry and of complying with the edict pronounced by the Inter-American Human Rights Comission last November.

This actions are the result of a common responsibility and commitment, but we hope that these actions really help our actual situation, because we can have a perfect laws, but if the goverment it is not able to make those laws work, it is the same thing as to be without a legal system.