Mr. Chairperson, Esteemed Members of the Committee,
ladies and gentlemen – good afternoon.
About ICAED
The International Coalition Against Enforced
Disappearances (ICAED) consists of 40 member-organizations from Africa,
Europe, the Eurasian Region (Euro-Mediterranean Region, Caucasus and
Belarus), Latin America, Asia and the United States. The ICAED includes
both international non-governmental human rights organizations and
national and regional associations of families of the disappeared which
together are united to combat the crime of enforced disappearance and
promote truth, justice, reparation, and remembrance for all
desaparecidos.
ICAED Recommendations to the Committee on Enforced
Disappearances
The ICAED strongly welcomes this opportunity to meet
the distinguished members of the Committee on Enforced Disappearance
(the Committee) on the historic occasion of its inaugural session. The
existence of this new treaty body is a source of hope for thousands of
relatives of the disappeared people throughout the world. The ICAED
considers it essential that the Committee is guaranteed the necessary
funding and staffing to carry out its functions in the most effective
manner.
The ICAED calls on the Committee to ensure that its
rules of procedure and methods of work are drafted in such a way as to
ensure that the Committee can effectively carry out its mandate and
functions and are accessible to civil society. In this regard, the ICAED
urges the Committee to open a participative process in the coming
months, in which representatives of civil society are invited to express
their views and deliver proposals for the consolidated version of the
rules of procedure of the Committee.
The ICAED stresses the crucial importance that will
be played by the Committee with regard to the Article 30 urgent
intervention procedure. It is essential that the Committee enables the
functioning of this procedure as soon as possible, in a manner that
ensures that it is both accessible to those representing the disappeared
and appropriately coordinated with existing special procedures and other
international monitoring bodies.
The ICAED encourages the Committee to establish close
cooperation with the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary
Disappearances, in order to enrich its own work in the light of some 30
years of experience of this Working Group by, for examples, coordinating
the schedule and venue of sessions of the Committee with the Working
Group and establishing a system of communication between the two bodies.
The ICAED also underscores the crucial importance of
country visits that may be undertaken by the Committee. Wherever
possible, planned visits should be announced as promptly as possible in
order to enable the widest possible participation of civil society. The
ICAED calls the attention of the Committee to the grave situations of
ongoing and continuing cases of enforced disappearance in the territory
of the following States Parties to the Convention: Honduras, Iraq,
Mexico, Nigeria, and Tunisia, and urges the Committee to consider
country visits among the possible responses of the Committee. In
addition, the ICAED stresses the fundamental importance of ensuring a
regular system of follow-up on the conclusions and recommendations
issued at the end of its missions.
The ICAED urges the Committee to promote the
effective implementation of the Convention in the domestic laws of
States Parties and urges the Committee to develop guidelines and tools
to assist States Parties in this regard. The recently published ICAED
member Amnesty International Checklist for Effective Implementation
of the Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced
Disappearance is a comprehensive guide for States Parties to
implement domestic legislation fully in line with the Convention and
other international law standards and may serve as a useful tool to
promote ratification and implementation.
The ICAED calls the attention of the Committee to the
importance of adopting interpretations of the Convention’s provision
that affirm the treaty’s central purpose of ending the practice of
enforced disappearance, as well as clarifying the numerous and complex
obligations for States Parties that arise from the Convention. For
instance, the Committee will be called upon to interpret Article 20
which provides for possible restriction of States Parties’ obligation to
provide information about deprivation of liberty when a set of narrowly
defined circumstances are met. In order to ensure that this provision is
not abused, it is critical that the Committee provides an interpretation
of this provision in the light of the spirit and purpose of the
Convention. Similarly, the interpretation of the definition of a victim
pursuant to Article 24 of the Convention in a comprehensive manner in
line with international law standards is an important task of the
Committee.
Finally, in the course of its work, the ICAED urges
the Committee to pay particular attention to the enforced disappearance
of children, including during State Party examinations and country
visits.
Participating Organizations to the ICAED International Conference on
Enforced Disappearances
November 7-9, 2011 Geneva Switzerland
Asian Federation Against Enforced Disappearances (AFAD)
Al-Ata’a for Human Rights Support-Iraq
Amnesty International
