What is the UN Convention for the Protection of
All Persons from Enforced Disappearance?
The Convention is different from the 1992 Declaration as it is a treaty of
universal scope, which will be legally binding for the States that ratify
it. Its text was approved on 23 September 2005; was adopted by the UN
Human Rights Council on 27 June 2006; approved by the UN General Assembly
on 20 December 2006 and opened for signature on 7 February 2007 in Paris,
France. On that occasion, 57 States signed it. Since then, signatures have
increased to 81 and 15 States have ratified the Convention, which,
however, will enter into force when 20 instruments of ratification shall
have been deposited with the UN Secretary-General. As of this
writing, Japan is the only Asian State which has ratified the Convention.
From the initial assessment of the Asian Federation Against Involuntary
Disappearances (AFAD), the following are some factors which contributed to
the successful adoption of the Convention in September 2005:
1. Gaps in international human rights and humanitarian
law 1. w that permit the practice of enforced disappearances to develop
and spread in countries and regions all over the world, especially Asia.
Families and victims quickly perceived that situation and began to lobby
for an international treaty to fill those gaps;
2. Inadequacy of the 1992 Declaration and the UNGWEID
to stop the phenomenon spreading all over the world as they are only
declaratory in scope. There was an urgent need for a universally binding
international instrument to stop enforced disappearance;
3. The Latin American Federation of Associations of
Relatives of Disappeared- Detainees’ (FEDEFAM’s) indefatigable and
persistent efforts to work for the establishment of an international
Convention to protect people from enforced disappearances and to
concretize its slogan: Nunca Mas! (Never Again!) was a major force
in pushing for the final adoption of the Convention by the UN General
Assembly;
4. The cooperation of the different organizations of
families from various continents as well as of international human rights
organizations which joined efforts to lobby for the Convention during the
three-year drafting and negotiation process (2002- 005) within a
especially mandated Working Group. The excellent combination of the true-
o-life experiences of the families and the legal expertise of the
international NGOs greatly strengthened the Convention’s importance,
stressed its urgency and was a voice loud enough to be heard at the UN in
Geneva, Switzerland;
5. The lobbying at the UN and the visits by organizations of families of
the disappeared to the Ministries of Foreign Affairs in their different
countries and to their Permanent Missions in Geneva and New York helped
convince governments of the political, moral and practical value of the
Convention to the families of the disappeared and to all peoples;
6. The still unresolved and continuing cases of enforced disappearances in
various parts of the world as can be seen in the annual reports of the
UNWGEID;
7. The support of the media and civil society was indispensable, indeed.