United Nations Human Rights Website - Treaty Bodies Database - Document - Sessional/Annual Report of Committee - training, which focus on a wide range of public activities in which human rights violations may occur. The report shows that considerable efforts have been made to strengthen respect for human rights by public servants and society in general. 3. Factors and difficulties impeding the application of the provisions of the Convention 160. The fragility of the culture of respect for guarantees of the rights of individuals and insufficient awareness on the part of the various authorities of the importance of punishing torture harshly and in accordance with the law, as recognized in the report with a frankness which the Committee appreciates, are subjective factors which probably make it more difficult fully to guarantee the fulfilment of the obligations imposed on the State party by the Convention. 161. The restriction on the powers of the National Human Rights Commission, whose recommendations the law specifically states to be "non-binding" and of a non-compulsory nature for the authorities or public services to which they are addressed, and the fact that the Commission is not empowered to institute legal proceedings in order to conduct investigations of the complaints it makes, are limitations which prevents it from fully serving the basic purpose of protecting and promoting human rights for which it was created. The Committee considers that broadening its mandate in the sense indicated would contribute to better compliance with the Convention by the State party. 4. Subjects of concern 162. The Committee has received abundant reliable information stating that, despite the legal and administrative measures the Government has taken to eradicate torture during the four-year period covered by the report, torture continues to be systematically practised in Mexico, particularly by the federal and local judicial police and, recently, by members of the armed forces on the pretext of combating subversives. The Committee notes with concern the wide gap between the extensive legal and administrative framework established in order to put an end to torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and the actual situation as revealed in the information received. 163. In the Committee's opinion, the ineffectiveness of efforts to put an end to the practice of torture is the result, inter alia, of the continuing impunity of torturers and the fact that the authorities responsible for the administration of justice continue to admit confessions and statements made under torture as evidence during trials, despite legal provisions explicitly declaring them inadmissible. 164. Even the State party's report includes statistics which clearly demonstrate the impunity of torturers; by contrast with the large number of complaints of torture received by the National Human Rights Commission, which the report also mentions, only two convictions based on the Federal Act to Prevent and Punish Torture and five for homicide resulting from torture were handed down between June 1990 and May 1996. 165. In practice, the failure by the authority responsible for criminal investigation to investigate reports of torture promptly and impartially, as stipulated in articles 12 and 13 of the Convention, results in the denial of the right of victims to take legal action to claim compensation for the violation of their rights. http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/(Symbol)/de75e94f920bd0a0802565a600537744?Opendocument (29 of 109)16/10/2006 9:54:12 AM