The 2nd ICAED General Membership Conference, Geneva, Switzerland, 24 – 27 March 2014

We, human rights organizations from Belarus, Cyprus, Indonesia, Morocco, Philippines, Switzerland, Western Sahara, including the online participation of organizations from France, El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, Thailand, Uruguay, gather here in Geneva, Switzerland during the last week of the 25th session of the UN Human Rights Council in the spirit of international solidarity to step up our global campaign for the universal ratification and full implementation of the UN Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. We evaluated our work; read the signs of the times on the phenomenon of enforced disappearance in our respective countries; and sharpened our strategies in campaigning for the end of enforced disappearance and impunity worldwide.

We renew our common commitment to attain a world without disappeared people.

Enforced Disappearance: A Present Global Problem

Even after the long years of struggle against this most heinous of human rights violations, someone, somewhere is still disappeared or is under the threat of being disappeared by repressive and non-repressive governments in many parts of the world. Enforced disappearance violates the most basic rights of a person – the right to security and dignity, right to fair trial, right not to be tortured, right to truth, right to have effective investigation and remedies, right to family life, and when the disappeared is killed, the right to identification and proper burial or cremation. Its persistence is a grave threat to the values and principles that we hold dear as democratic societies. Without an appropriate and urgent response, more will add to the long list of desaparecidos worldwide.

The total number of cases transmitted by the Working Group to Governments since its inception is 53,986 The number of cases under active consideration that have not yet been clarified, closed or discontinued stands at 42,889 in a total of 84 States. These numbers do not take into account the massive underreporting of cases in many countries in the world. From the reports of the Working Group, different human rights organizations, specially our member organizations, disappearances are still happening in alarming numbers in Asia, the Euro-Mediterranean, Africa and even Latin America, among other regions... Read the full statement here