Forced Disappearance
In the early years of the 21st Century
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Country-by-Country
Reports ]
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Enforced
Disappearances Amnesty International Report, 7 November
2014 [accessed 6 March 2015] [scroll down] An enforced disappearance takes place when a person
is arrested, detained or abducted by the state or agents acting for the
state, who then deny that the person is being held or conceal their
whereabouts, placing them outside the protection of the law. Very often, people who have disappeared are never
released and their fate remains unknown. Their families and friends may never
find out what has happened to them. But the person has not just vanished. Someone, somewhere, knows what has happened
to them. Someone is responsible. Enforced disappearance is a crime under
international law but all too often the perpetrators are never bought to
justice. Working Group on
Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances UN Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Disappearances/Pages/DisappearancesIndex.aspx [accessed 5 March 2014] MANDATE - The Working
Group's basic mandate is to assist the relatives of disappeared persons to
ascertain the fate and whereabouts of their disappeared family members. For
this purpose the Group receives and examines reports of disappearances
submitted by relatives of disappeared persons or human rights organizations
acting on their behalf. After determining whether those reports comply with a
number of criteria, the Working Group transmits individual cases to the
Governments concerned, requesting them to carry out investigations and to
inform the Working Group of the results. With the adoption by the General Assembly of the
Declaration on the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearances,
starting as at 1992 and in addition to its core mandate, the Working Group
was also entrusted with monitoring the progress of States in fulfilling their
obligations deriving from the Declaration and to provide to Governments
assistance in its implementation. The Working Group draws the attention of
Governments and non-governmental organizations to different aspects of the
Declaration and recommends ways of overcoming obstacles to the realization of
its provisions. In this capacity, the Working Group has a preventive role, by
assisting States in overcoming obstacles to the realization of the
Declaration. This is done both while carrying out country visits and by
providing advisory services, when requested. |