US and others must seek answers on Mexico’s missing students

While there seems to be a new crisis every week to grab the 24-hour news networks, there has been a theme that has been in the background that we can no longer ignore: Young people are not being protected by their governments. Significantly, a few weeks ago, 43 Mexican students in the Mexican state of Guerrero “disappeared,” and six were fatally shot after clashing with police during a protest against the cutting of funds at their university. While this may seem far away, we can expect these events to have consequences inside our own borders.

In Mexico, the violence against young people for exercising basic freedoms is reaching alarming levels, warranting international attention. This is especially true as local police are increasingly linked with drug-crime organizations. Indeed, preliminary investigations in Mexico demonstrate that police directly handed over the students to the local drug gang.

{mosads}From the young girls kidnapped in Nigeria to the mass grave believed to contain bodies of the missing Mexican students, governments have been failing to safeguard the most basic liberties, dignities and security to their youth. When the U.S. deals with Mexico, creating a global partnership to push for these protections should be an essential part of this relationship.

Violence against young people has been widely documented lately: the Nigerian girls kidnapped by terrorist group Boko Haram drew even Michelle Obama into the #BringBackOurGirls campaign; the youngest Nobel Prize laureate, Malala Yousafzai, had been shot in the head by the Taliban on her way to school; gangs currently destabilizing Honduras are known for leaving the dismembered bodies of high school girls who refused to become gang property.

In our globalized society, if things get bad enough anywhere in the world, it eventually washes up on our shores. What would the effect be of a dictator or drug lord kidnapping young girls, killing children and turning teenage boys into extremist soldiers? It would certainly increase the likelihood of terrorist attacks around the globe, much the way that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) destabilizing Syria and drawing recruits is a threat to us at home.

Meanwhile, the “border surge” that we have seen overwhelming our courts is made up of children fleeing the same sort of gangs butchering high school girls in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico.

What is occurring in these countries is not an isolated incident: It’s a story we see every day as young people around the world risk their lives to pursue freedom and justice in their country. As a nation that embraces freedom, President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and Congress must become active partners with Mexico and the international community to bring justice to Mexico and wherever else young people are being denied it.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” These words from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. have had such prominence in our culture for good reason: They not only helped to highlight why people of all colors had a vested interest in the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, but they are also a general call for justice that transcends the time and place in which these words were spoken. In this spirit, the U.S. is confronting its own challenges, particularly in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of 18 year-old Michael Brown at the hands of Ferguson, Mo. police: His case has become so important to the public specifically because he is emblematic of a wide, systemic problem that offends the sense of justice King spoke of.

A nation’s security relies on actively protecting young people’s lives and freedoms inside and outside its borders: young people bring vitality to a nation, replenishing a stream of ideas, and the instability resulting from violence against a nation’s youth hurts prosperity and progress and damages security in other nations as it becomes a hotbed for extremism.

Young people in Mexico and all over the world are calling on us to stand with them, not only for their future, but also for the future, prosperity and security of the United States and the world.

Vargas is codirector of the DREAM Action Coalition and a national activist for immigration reform.