UN chief denounces rise in enforced disappearances ‎

The chief of the United Nations has denounced the alarming increase in enforced or involuntary disappearances and urged all member states to ratify or accede to the UN convention on enforced disappearance aimed at preventing such acts.  "The prohibition of enforced disappearance is absolute," ,  UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a message for the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, that was marked on Sunday, Aug. 30.  He was referring to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, which affirms unequivocally that the use of enforced disappearance is illegal under any circumstances, including war, internal political instability or any other public emergency.

“Victims of enforced disappearances are deprived of their liberty, kept in secret detention and seldom released," Ban said. “Often their fate remains unknown; they are frequently tortured and in constant fear of being killed. Even if they are eventually set free, the physical and psychological scars stay with them for the rest of their lives. The victims' families and loved ones also suffer immense anguish,” he said.

The UN chief noted that far from being a practice employed only in the past by military dictatorships, enforced disappearance continues to be used by some states. In recent years, there has also been an alarming number of acts by non-state actors, including armed extremist and terrorist groups, that are tantamount to enforced disappearances and that are also gross abuses of human rights, he said.

In the past year alone, the two UN expert groups on enforced disappearance received 246 requests by family members across the world to take urgent action. “This figure is just a fraction of the thousands of cases that are never reported either because of security conditions or because of a lack of knowledge of the existence of international mechanisms that can help,” the UN chief said.  (Source: UN)