THREATS TO THE INTER-AMERICAN HUMAN RIGHTS SYSTEM Despite the extent of the region’s human rights challenges, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) – critical to defend and promote human rights as well as ensure access to justice for victims who were unable to do so in their own countries – was affected by a financial crisis for most of the year. This was caused by an insufficient allocation of resources by member states of the Organization of American States (OAS) – a striking demonstration of states’ lack of political will to promote and protect human rights both within and beyond their territories. In May, the IACHR said it faced the worst financial crisis in its history. There was a real danger that progress made by the IACHR in confronting gross human rights violations and structural discrimination would be weakened – precisely when the IACHR needed to play a more vigorous role in ensuring states uphold their obligations under international human rights law. With an annual budget of US$8 million, the inter-American human rights system remained the world’s poorest human rights system, with fewer resources than its corresponding entities in Africa (US$13 million) and Europe (about US$104.5 million). Although additional funding was eventually received to complement the IACHR income, there were concerns that the political crisis would continue unless states allocated adequate funding to the institution and cooperated with it, regardless of how critical it was of countries’ human rights record. There were more specific failures to support the IACHR too. Mexico’s government sought to obstruct its work on the Ayotzinapa case – in which 43 students were forcibly disappeared after being arrested by police in 2014. Despite the authorities’ claim that the students were kidnapped by a criminal gang, and their remains burned and thrown in a dumpster, a group of IACHR-appointed experts concluded that it was scientifically Amnesty International Report 2016/17 impossible for that many bodies to have been burned in the conditions claimed. In November, the IACHR launched a special mechanism to follow up on the experts’ recommendations, but appropriate support from the authorities was difficult to guarantee. REFUGEES, MIGRANTS AND STATELESS PEOPLE Central America was the source of a rapidly worsening refugee crisis. Relentless violence in this often forgotten part of the world continued to cause a surge in asylum applications from Central American citizens in Mexico, the USA and other countries, reaching levels not seen since most of the region’s armed conflicts ended decades ago. Hundreds of thousands of people travelled through Mexico either to seek asylum there, or to continue to the USA. Many were detained in harsh conditions, killed, abducted or faced extortion by criminal gangs who often operated in collusion with the authorities. Large numbers of unaccompanied children and adolescents were particularly affected by human rights abuses; women and girls were at serious risk of sexual violence and human trafficking. Despite overwhelming evidence that many asylum-seekers were at risk of extreme violence should they not be granted asylum, deportations from Mexico and the USA remained steady. Many people were forcibly returned back to the life-threatening situations they were fleeing in the first place; some were allegedly killed by gangs after being deported. Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador fuelled this deepening crisis by failing to protect people from violence and to set up a comprehensive protection plan for people who were deported from countries such as Mexico and the USA. Yet, rather than taking responsibility for their role in the crisis, the governments concerned focused only on the human rights abuses that people suffered while travelling through Mexico to the USA. They also falsely argued that most people were fleeing out of 27