ABSTRACT
This paper studies the impact of groups of victims on access to justice, decision making and the reduction of insecurity in Mexico. To this end, it is imperative to review Article 17 of the Mexican Constitution in relation to the prohibition that states that no person may take justice into his own hands, which guarantees the right to have justice administered by the courts, a right that admits no exceptions under any circumstances. Relying on a rights-based approach, a question emerges on organized civil society as a political subject, which has often supplanted the state functions of searching and locating disappeared people. The aim is to find out if, within the limits of participatory democracy, citizens can have access to justice in a horizontal way and thus influence the public life of the country. The answer is affirmative, the actions of the groups of victims offer laudable results that mark a path for the defense and promotion of human rights, groups of victims and the visibility of disappeared people resulting from the failure of the Mexican State in the public security field.
Keywords:
groups of victims; citizen participation; access to justice; public security; disappeared people