Mexico promotes a convention at the UN to punish crimes against humanity
Arturo Sánchez Jiménez
La Jornada Newspaper
Sunday, February 1, 2026, p. 12
Mexico and Gambia are promoting the negotiation of an international convention at the United Nations (UN) for the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity. This was reported by Pablo Arrocha Olabuenaga, legal consultant of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE), in an article published on the Just Security portal, where he details the diplomatic strategy to break the stagnation that for years kept this issue frozen in the Sixth Committee of the General Assembly.
Arrocha explains that the project was stopped by a practice called “technical renewal.” This means that, each year, the commission approved the same text without changing a single substantive comma, only updating dates and report numbers, which in fact kept the topic “frozen” to avoid uncomfortable debates. To break this cycle, Mexico and Gambia decided to act in a “national capacity”; That is, they presented the proposal on their own as individual countries, instead of waiting for an official UN mediator to draft a text that would seek the support of all countries equally.
By acting independently, the proponents avoided the paralysis generated by seeking a total consensus, where a single country can stop everything. Arrocha notes in his article that this approach allowed the drafters to be “free from the usual constraint placed on office facilitators to maintain consensus.” This maneuver forced the countries that opposed the convention to show their faces, because under this modality, if there is no agreement, a vote can be forced to advance.
The critical path and timelines for the creation of the Convention are already outlined following the adoption of resolutions 77/249 and 79/122. According to what Arrocha stated, the formal negotiation will take place in fully established stages: “the negotiation conference is scheduled for 2028 and 2029”, with two sessions of three weeks each. The consultant specifies that the work is based on the articles already drafted by the International Law Commission, but the adjustment process is already underway.
In the short term, the diplomat highlights a key date: next April 30, the final deadline for countries to send their proposals for changes to the original text. Later, in 2027, a second preparatory session will be held to define the rules of the future conference, including how voting will be done. Arrocha warns that not having the possibility of voting on the text of the Convention would be a strategic error, since it is the only way to guarantee that the treaty is finalized against minorities that try to block it.
