|
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)?
|
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)
From AFAD’s initial assessment, the following are some factors which contributed to the successful adoption/approval of the Convention in September 2005:
1. Gaps in international human rights and humanitarian law 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 so began to lobby for an international treaty to fill those gaps;
2. Failure of the 1992 Declaration and the UNGWEID to stop the phenomenon spreading all over the world as they were only declaratory in scope. There was an urgent need for a binding international instrument to stop disappearances;
3. FEDEFAM’s indefatigable and persistent efforts to work to establish 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 United Nations General Assembly;
4. The cooperation of the different organizations of families from various continents as well as the international human rights organizations which joined efforts to lobby for the Convention during the three-year drafting process(2002-2005) at a especially mandated United Nations Working Group. The excellent combination of the true-to-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 United Nations 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 and to all peoples;
6. The support of the media and civil society was indispensable, indeed.
|