Law enforcement to combat enforced disappearances
Vying for the honour of the first human rights treaty of the 21st century is the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. After 25 years of work, the text of the draft convention has been passed by the UN Human Rights Council and now awaits adoption at the General Assembly later this month. I guess it depends whether it or the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is listed higher on the agenda.
Enforced or involuntary disappearances were made infamous in the southern cone of South America in the 1970s, but are by no means confined to that continent. There are currently 18,555 people unaccounted for in the Balkans alone.
And disappearances seem to be on the rise since the advent of the ‘war on terror’. A leaked report on a US investigation into its own detention practices after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in 2004 spoke of ‘ghost detainees’ held in secret and moved around to avoid detection by prison monitors such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Amnesty has independent evidence of secret US detention facilities. Other governments, such as Nepal, Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan, are also using the war on terror as an excuse to disappear people.
Disappeared people are at greater risk of torture, ill-treatment and extrajudicial execution. Arbitrary detention is a rights violation. Everyone has the right to challenge their detention (habeas corpus) and, if wanted for an offence, the right to a fair trial. Under the new Convention, enforced disappearance will itself be a violation of human rights.
"Impunity or failures of justice create a social climate in which there can be no trust in institutions and hence no stability," warns ICRC lawyer Philip Spoerri. All acts of enforced disappearance should be investigated, prosecuted and punished as crimes.
Chilean lawyer and government minister Paulina Veloso is one bereft by disappearance. Her husband vanished in 1977 during the Pinochet regime’s ‘Operation Condor’. She believes the UN’s efforts on behalf of the disappeared, together with the condemnation of the international community, may have succeeded in reducing the number of disappearances.
The draft Convention, which provides for a monitoring body and an avenue for urgent appeals, has been hailed by Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists, the International Federation of Human Rights and Human Rights Watch as ‘a great step forward’. It should be universally ratified and enacted as law in all domestic jurisdictions.
[…] At least 57 countries have signed the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance since it was adopted by the UN General Assembly in December last year. […]