Geneva, January 3 (RHC-teleSUR) -- The Mexican government has admitted that the 43 Ayotzinapa students who were kidnapped by police and have been missing since September are victims of forced disappearance.

The comments came as the relatives of the teacher training students attended the United Nations Committee of Enforced Disappearances in Geneva, Switzerland, Monday in the first of two meetings.

“Mexico recognizes without the smallest ambiguity that, despite the important advances that exist in the country in human rights, we continue facing challenges that we have to overcome,” said Mexican Foreign Affairs Sub-secretary Juan Manuel Gomez Robledo during the committee’s opening the session.

The charge of forced disappearance implies abduction by the state or those acting on behalf of it, who deny that the missing person is being held, or conceal their location. Of the 90 arrests made in connection with the case, no one has been charged with forced disappearance.

“The forced disappearance of the students of Ayotzinapa shows, once more, that we have to continue addressing problems associated with poverty, exclusion and corruption, to face organized crime and the violence that accompanies it, and so strengthen the capacities of the state in security and justice,” added Gomez Robledo.

Before boarding the flight bound for Europe Sunday, the relatives, accompanied by a team of lawyers and human rights activists, reiterated that the Mexican government cannot close the case and that the many irregularities need to be cleared up.

“For that reason we are going to ask (the U.N.) to listen to us, that justice is done, because I want my son back alive,” said the father of one of the missing students, Bernabe Abrajan.

The group presented a document arguing that the government should be forced to keep investigating the case.