On International Day of Disappeared UN launches call for action

Noting that the enforced disappearance of people around the globe continues unabated and is even growing in some countries, the United Nations today marked International Day of the Disappeared with an appeal to all governments to take preventive action and end impunity for the responsible security forces and armed bands.

The UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances expressed particular concern over the situation in Nepal, where the number of alleged disappearances has risen to 130 for the first half of 2004 as compared to 18 for all of 2003, Russia with more than 270 cases, and Colombia where more than 890 cases remain to be clarified.

In UN-administered Kosovo where some 3,000 people are missing in the wake of ethnic fighting between Serbs and Albanians, Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Special Representative Søren Jessen-Petersen called for the enhanced cooperation of every organisation.

“Where are they?” he asked in a message on the Day. “Far more should be done to shed light on the fate of missing persons. All those involved in issues relating to missing persons must speak with one voice to exert pressure at every level so that the process of identification is accelerated. It is clear that not enough is being done to ease the suffering of the affected families.”

The Geneva-based Working Group noted that while in the past disappearances were mainly associated with the State policies of authoritarian regimes, they now occur in the context of much more complex situations of internal conflict generating violence, humanitarian crises, and human rights violations.

“The Working Group calls upon all governments to take action to prevent disappearances, and in particular to end the practice of secret detentions,” it said in a message. “All governments must end impunity for security forces and armed bands who perpetrate disappearances, and must make every effort to discover the fate of disappeared persons, share that information with family and friends of the disappeared, and provide compensation in the case of death.”