Oral
Intervention
Mary
Aileen Diez-Bacalso
Asian
Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD)
Room V11,
UN Bldg., New York, New York
19 October
2006
Your
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
As the
member- states of the United Nations meet here in New York on the occasion of
the 61st General Assembly, the families of the disappeared in our countries in
Asia, the continent which, in recent years, submitted the highest number of
cases before the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary
Disappearances, anxiously wait for the much-aspired adoption of the United
Nations Draft Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced or
Involuntary Disappearances.
25 years
ago, the Latin American Federation of Associations of Relatives of
Disappeared-Detainees (FEDEFAM) was established to respond to the alarming
phenomenon of enforced disappearances in the region. Never did it occur to
them that many years later, the Asian Federation Against Involuntary
Disappearances (AFAD) was given birth to in response to the equally alarming
problem of enforced disappearances in the Asian continent. Lamentably, the
situation has become global as cases have been reported from more than 90
countries of the world to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or
Involuntary Disappearances. Knowing that we are one in the same pain, in the
same hope, in the same struggle and eventually, in the same victory for the
cause of our beloved desaparecidos, we have been compelled to form this
international network against enforced disappearances as an organizational
response to this scourge.
Enforced
disappearances are not just cold statistics documented in the reports of the
United Nations Working Group on Enforced Disappearances. They speak not only
of the deprivation of the disappeared persons’ most basic right to life and
liberty, but also of untold sufferings on the part of the mothers, fathers,
brothers, sisters, sons and daughters and relatives of disappeared persons.
The excruciating pain of waiting without knowing until when shall they wait,
the uncertainty of the disappeared loved ones’ situation, the chilling
possibility of torture and death, not to mention the economic dislocation
caused by the loss of breadwinners– these are in themselves a form of torture
on the families of the victims whose pain only they themselves can fathom.
In the
Asian continent, regional mechanisms of protection of human rights are not
available. Moreover, domestic laws distinctly criminalizing enforced
disappearances do not exist in any of our countries. Existing international
mechanisms are insufficient especially so that such cases continue to happen
without let up in a region already facing socio-economic and political crises
reaching critical proportions.
Your
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, the universal crime of enforced
disappearances, therefore necessitates a strong international treaty with an
independent monitoring body to ensure implementation. For this reason, our
Federation had been actively lobbying at the national, regional and
international levels to ensure the birth of this very important instrument
that guarantees two new autonomous rights – the rights of persons not to be
subjected to enforced disappearances and the right to know the truth. Linking
arms with our counterparts from Latin America, Africa and Europe, making the
voices of the families of the disappeared heard at the United Nations, we
actively participated in all sessions of the then Inter-sessional Open-Ended
Working Group to Elaborate a Draft Legally-Binding Normative Instrument for
the Protection of All Persons from Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances and
witnessed the victorious conclusion on September 22, 2005 in Geneva,
Switzerland. Its unanimous adoptions both by the then working group drafting
the future treaty and the recently-established United Nations Human Rights
Council are very much treasured by the families of the disappeared as their
own collective moral and political victory. This future instrument, if adopted
and implemented, will indeed be a joint victory of the United Nations and of
all families of the disappeared all over the world as it will contribute to
the eradication of this crime from the face of the earth.
Your
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, on this occasion, may we reiterate our
heartfelt gratitude and commendation to the French government, especially to
His Excellency Ambassador Bernard Kessedjian for the unflinching commitment
and dedication manifested to ensure the finalization of the text until its
successful conclusion in September 2005 and its unanimous adoption by the UN
Human Rights Council in June 2006. We equally express our gratitude to all
those UN member- states which, in no small measure, contributed to what have
so far been achieved.
Finally,
in the name of our disappeared loved ones whose spiritual presence, we believe
is giving us this persistence to continue the uphill struggle for truth, for
justice, for reparation and recuperation of their historical memory, we urge
on all member-states to unanimously adopt the much-desired International
Convention on the Protection of all Persons from Enforced or Involuntary
Disappearances. Its final adoption and eventual implementation in all of our
countries will guarantee a world without desaparecidos – a world where
no mother, no father, no son, no daughter, no sister, no brother will ask the
same nagging question, "Where are you? "
Thank you
very much.
