FORUM: "Stand up for the rights of the disappeared." International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances 2025. The United Nations and regional human rights experts urged all States to provide effective access to justice for victims of enforced disappearance, that include any individual who has suffered harm as the direct result of an enforced disappearance. Follow the conversations with the hashtags: #enforceddisappearances, #30August, #access2justice,#InternationalDayOfVictimsOfEnforcedDisappearances.
EVENTS: On August 30th; The International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances 2025 will be held at the United Nations Palace in Geneva and at UNHQ in New York. The United Nations invites authorities to strengthen operational and technical capacities, including the provision of training in mass grave exhumations, crime scene management, and mortuary procedures; to provide guidance on effective operational planning, inter-agency cooperation, chain of custody, and the upgrade mortuary facilities. In the context of the 76th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Committee on Enforced Disappearances, the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, the Inter-american Commission on Human Rights, the Chairperson of the Working Group on Death Penalty, Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Killings of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the Representatives of Indonesia and Malaysia to the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights jointly called on all States to make pledges to promote justice for all victims of enforced disappearances without delay, and to ratify international and regional instruments on enforced disappearances. Register to participate!
On 15 and 16 January 2025 in Geneva, Switzerland. The forthcoming World Congress on Enforced Disappearances, which will take place, presents a crucial opportunity to bring States, victims and their representative organisations, national human rights institutions and experts together to find actionable solutions to eliminate and prevent enforced disappearances and promote the universal ratification of the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons against Enforced Disappearances. The World Congress will allow us to identify and adopt concrete actions to address these concerns and pledge to implement them under our respective mandates. We encourage all actors involved in the fight against enforced disappearances to make the most of this event and to commit to concrete action. On this International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, we reiterate our shared commitment to assisting victims worldwide and our call for collective action to end this scourge, once and for all.” The first World Congress on Enforced Disappearances provided a platform to share experiences, challenges, and best practices. This crucial step in shaping a collective path toward justice, truth, reparation, and the prevention of future disappearances, showed once again the urgency that all States ratify the Convention for the Protection of all Persons against Enforced Disappearances.
PUBLICATIONS: 2024 Report of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances; This report reflects the activities of the WGEID, communications and cases that it processed during the reporting period. It also includes the main findings and observations on the thematic study on enforced disappearances and elections. Explore the Thematic report: Enforced disappearances and elections -A/HRC/57/54/Add.4 and the full report. A/HRC/57/54.
STATEMENTS: The United Nations and regional human rights experts issued a joint statement today, urging all actors to join forces immediately to support victims of enforced disappearance and ensure that their rights and obligations as codified in regional and international treaties and other legal instruments. Read the full Statement by Human Rights experts ahead of the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances 2025; August 30th.
Enforced disappearances entail a serious violation of multiple human rights, inflicting profound suffering, experienced not only by those who are forcibly disappeared, but also by their families, their communities, and by society as a whole. They are often practiced as a deliberate strategy of control through terror intended to cause suffering, instill fear, suppress dissent, and punish entire communities. Their commission involves varying degrees of participation, acquiescence, or omission by State agents.
Any act of enforced disappearance places the persons subjected thereto outside the protection of the law and at high risk of being subjected to serious human rights violations. It constitutes a violation of both international and domestic laws that guarantee, among others, the right to recognition as a person before the law, the right to liberty and security of the person and the right not to be subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. It also constitutes a grave threat to the right to life.
The prolonged isolation and deprivation of communication with the outside world, to which forcibly disappeared persons are subjected, are harmful to their psychological integrity and that of their relatives, and constitute a violation of the prohibition of torture and/or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Enforced disappearances prevent monitoring by national preventive mechanisms and other competent bodies, facilitating the commission of torture and/or other forms of cruel treatment. Decades of documentation of this heinous crime show how the practice has often served as a means to circumvent fundamental legal safeguards, including limitations to the duration of deprivation of liberty and the prohibition of violent interrogation methods.
Various international and regional human rights bodies, including the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the African Commission on Human and Peoples? Rights, the Committee against Torture, the Human Rights Committee, and the European Court of Human Rights, have recognized enforced disappearances as a form of torture or other ill-treatment against the forcibly disappeared individuals and/or their families.
The Committee on Enforced Disappearances and the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances view with concern the continuous torture inflicted upon the relatives of the forcibly disappeared persons. The daily anguish of not knowing their fate and whereabouts, the fear of never seeing them again, as well as the silence, inaction, official indifference, and impunity that usually surround this crime, inflict on relatives unimaginable pain and despair. Scores of heart-breaking testimonies by family members refer to these experiences as a form of psychological torture or cruel treatment.
The psychological toll on family members is devastating and transgenerational, entailing lasting physical and mental health consequences such as depression, anxiety and profound trauma. Women, in particular, often bear a disproportionate burden, in most cases abruptly having to assume new roles as search organizers, advocates, on top of the additional caring or financial responsibilities they have to assume to their families.
Children grow up in the shadows of fear, doubt and anxiety created by the enforced disappearance, and the rupture of the family structure.
On this International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, we urgently call on all States to strengthen their policies to prevent and eradicate this crime and to guarantee the right of relatives of disappeared persons and society as a whole to know the truth about the fate and whereabouts of those forcibly disappeared, as well as access to justice and integral reparations. We acknowledge the shared aspiration that was recalled by all participants to the World Congress on Enforced Disappearance in January 2025 for truth, healing, and dignity, and reaffirm the value of constructive dialogue and cooperation in fostering a more humane and caring society.
Enforced disappearance is a wound that corrodes the fabric of society. It is a form of torture and/or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment that must be condemned unequivocally, prevented and eradicated through collective action, effective prevention, accountability, and sustained support for victims, including through the implementation of the pledges made at the World Congress on Enforced Disappearances.
We stand in solidarity with all those affected by enforced disappearances and reaffirm our commitment to truth, justice, rehabilitation, and reparations for all victims.
This is the occasion for the remaining States that have not yet ratified the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons against Enforced Disappearance and the Inter- American Convention on Forced Disappearance to do their part to eradicate this heinous crime, starting with committing today to ratify them.
OHCHR Experts Joint Statement.
