enforced disappearance

Visitors throw white flowers into Rio de la Plata in Buenos Aires out of respect and remembrance for the tens of thousands of people who disappeared during Argentina's so-called "Dirty War".
UN Photo/Mark Garten

The world must not be ‘neutral’ on enforced disappearances 

21 September 2020
Human Rights

The international community “should not be neutral” on enforced disappearance, independent UN human rights experts said on Monday, calling for countries to strengthen cooperation in investigating and prosecuting perpetrators. 

 

Children playing in a UNICEF-backed child-friendly space in Jesús Martínez 'Palillo' Stadium, a temporary shelter in Mexico City, Mexico, November 2018.
UNICEF/Luis Kelly

Mexico cannot move forward ‘without addressing the shadows of the past’, says UN rights chief

10 April 2019
Human Rights

Concluding “five intense, interesting and rewarding working days” in Mexico, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Wednesday that the country was going through a “crucial” period where it needed to reckon with “the shadows of the past”, before it can move forward.

Fabián Salvioli, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence, addressing the 71st General Assembly session in 2016, in his then capacity as Chair of the Human Rights Committee.
UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

Proposal for Spain to reckon with its past during Franco era, welcomed by UN rights experts

25 July 2018
Human Rights

A group of UN human rights experts has welcomed the announcement earlier this month by the Spanish Minister of Justice that the Government is paving the way for a Truth Commission to investigate violations that occurred during the civil war and the era of dictatorship under General Francisco Franco that followed.

A wall of photos at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the site of infamous Security Prison S-21, documents the Khmer Rouge's brutal treatment of detainees.
UN Photo/Mark Garten

“New and alarming patterns” of enforced disappearance emerging: Zeid

17 February 2017
General News

The practice of enforced disappearance is not decreasing, it’s “morphing”, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has said.

Audio -
Bernard Duhaime, Vice-Chair of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, briefs journalists.
UN Photo/Evan Schneider

UN often first to listen to families of the disappeared

23 October 2015
General News

The more than 40,000 cases of people worldwide who have been arrested, detained or abducted against their will represent human beings, not numbers, a UN human rights expert has said.

Audio -
Rupert Colville, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré

Laos: UN urges Government to ensure safe return of missing human rights defender

21 December 2012
The United Nations today urged the Government of Laos to do everything possible to ensure that a prominent human rights defender who went missing a week ago is found safe and unharmed.