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contents:
cover
What is Enforced Disappearance?
What does the United Nations do about Enforced Disappearances?
What is the United Nations 1992 Declaration for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance?
What is the United Nations Convention For the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance?
From AFAD’s initial assessment, the following are some factors which contributed to the successful adoption/approval of the Convention in September 2005:
What does the recently approved Convention mainly state about the issue of disappearance?
Why is there a need for a Convention?
What will the Committee on Enforced Disappearances, to be established by the Convention, do?
What is the Convention’s importance to the Peoples of Asia?
Why is the ratification and entry into force of the Convention important?
What is the practical importance of the Convention for the victims and their families?
How can we lobby governments to recognize the importance of the instrument by signing and ratifying the Convention?
What is the International Coalition Against Enforced
Disappearance
(ICAED)?
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Primer on the United Nations Convention
for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance
Third Edition
(Prepared by the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances)
What is Enforced Disappearance?
Based on the definition used in the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons From Enforced Disappearance(2005), enforced disappearance is considered to be the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty committed by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by the refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which places such a person outside the protection of the law.
There are three constitutive elements in enforced disappearances: (1) deprivation of liberty, (2) state complicity and (3) concealment of all information on the victim. Those elements, per se, put the victim beyond the reach of law although some governments have argued that such is not necessarily and that this later situation – outside the protection of law- is in fact a (4) fourth separate element.
Enforced disappearances when attributed to non state-actors are included within the mandate of the Convention (Article 3) but not in the definition.
This practice was first used by the Nazi in 1941 in the “occupied territories” especially in the extermination of the Jews. It was
subsequently copied by the military and dictatorial regimes in Asia and Latin America and later even by formally democratic regimes. At present, Asia is the continent with the highest reported number of enforced disappearances. Many cases of disappearance in Europe and Africa have also been reported.
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