The First World Congress on Enforced Disappearances

Introduction

On January 15th and 16th, 2025, the first edition of the World Congress on Enforced Disappearances (WCED) was held in Geneva. The Congress was organised by the Committee on Enforced Disappearances and a number of civil society organisations and shed light on a practice that continues to persist all around the globe, with grave impacts not only for those forcibly disappeared but also for their families and communities. 

The Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Nada al Nashif, opened the WCED by commemorating the recent release of prisoners in Syria who had been forcibly disappeared during the Assad regime. Yet, she also highlighted that an alarming number of over 100,000 cases of enforced disappearances still prevail across the globe, with dark numbers estimated to be much higher. According to al Nashif, current circumstances of instability, conflict and human rights violations, as well as cultures of impunity, foster a climate of repression in which enforced disappearances can persist – with devastating impacts on the right to truth and justice, the right to liberty and security of the person, and the freedom from torture and ill-treatment. The WCED, therefore, aims to work actively to address, prevent and eradicate the practice of enforced disappearances on a global scale.

A panel with families of disappeared persons

The Congress was initiated with a panel discussion involving five speakers whose family members have been victims of enforced disappearance. The first, Isatou Jammeh, is the niece of the former president of the Gambia and the daughter of a victim of enforced disappearance, one of the former president’s brothers. She shared the story of her father’s disappearance and how her aunt, his sister, fell victim to an enforced disappearance after trying to speak up about the injustice suffered by her brother. Now, she said, she wants to be a voice and inspire other victims so that they also dare to speak up. In the Gambia, a newly founded reparations commission has set out to compensate victims of enforced disappearances and their family members. However, to benefit from reparations, victims need to gather the courage to speak up – which is why Isatou Jammeh has founded the Victims’ Podcast to help those affected gain the necessary courage and confidence.

The second speaker was Swastika Mali from Nepal. Born the daughter of a father who had been forcibly disappeared, her mother died during childbirth. As a minor and daughter of a victim of enforced disappearance, Swastika Mali encountered a series of problems: she struggled to receive citizenship through her father, facing statelessness, and was prohibited from opening a bank account, ruling out any possibility of receiving reparations. She was also prevented from inheriting her father’s possessions and family property due to the lack of a death certificate. In school, she was bullied and made a social outcast by students, parents and teachers. Her status as a daughter of a disappeared father further led to the revocation of a science scholarship. Swastika Mali highlighted the immense social stigma connected to enforced disappearances and its consequences for family members, especially children, on whom the psychological impact weighs extremely heavy.

The third speaker was Nassera Dutour. Her son had been forcibly disappeared in Algeria 28 years ago, and ever since that day, she never stopped her search for him. She is now actively engaged in truth-seeking and justice efforts of families in Algeria and acts as an intermediary between them and the government. She has dedicated her life to the research and investigation of cases, with her organisation currently holding 5,400 open dossiers. Nassera Dutour emphasised the importance of psychological support for families and the importance of the individual complaints mechanism in front of the UN Human Rights Committee as an option for redress.

Fourth was a speaker from Ukraine, Aksinia Bobruiko. She is the daughter of a woman who forcibly disappeared by the Russian military during its large-scale aggression against Ukraine. Aksinia Bobruiko highlighted the importance of victims’ families being able to connect with other families, to which extent their freedom of association needs to be guaranteed. She is herself part of a group called Civilians in Captivity, which has currently registered more than 156 cases of enforced disappearances in Ukraine, which stands against the stark background of a number of 16,000 Ukrainian civilians estimated to be in captivity. The group mostly concerns itself with information gathering and is devoted to finding its members’ relatives while also providing a form of psychological support.

The last speaker was Paulo Estrada from Guatemala. He currently acts as the plaintiff in a legal case brought in front of a Guatemalan court on behalf of his family members who have been the victims of enforced disappearance. Paulo Estrada emphasised the need for better coordinated regional efforts, especially in fighting cultures of impunity and corruption that foster a disappearance-friendly environment. Like his fellow panel members, he highlighted the importance of victims’ associations. Due to the lack of acknowledgement and investigation by governments, it is the family members themselves who are left to gather evidence, lead searches and identify cemeteries and remains. In Guatemala alone, around 45,000 people have disappeared, while so far only 10% have been found.

This panel highlighted an important focal point of the WCED: the victims of enforced disappearances are not solely the people taken – it is also all those who they are taken from, and to listen to and learn from their testimony is essential in fighting the crime of enforced disappearance. 

Empowering victims

To better understand and identify areas of concern and opportunities to combat human rights abuses, the WCED organised a series of thematic panels. One such panel was organised by the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture. This mechanism is responsible for providing funds to organisations that provide direct assistance to victims of torture, including, among others, psychological, legal, and social assistance. 

 The panellists here emphasised that rehabilitation should be a holistic treatment approach adapted to each individual victim to enable them to restore their life project and become part of society as a citizen. Different experts and speakers highlighted the importance of the transformation process from victim to activist, as many, if not most, organisations dedicated to ending enforced disappearances are founded by victims in an attempt to help each other and try to create a safe space to heal and search for their loved ones. The role of these organisations is fundamental to achieving truth and justice.

 The panel was attended by representatives of different organisations from different parts of the world, including Sudan, Russia (Chechnya), Pakistan, South Africa, Argentina, and Sri Lanka. All panellists faced different situations, but with similarities regarding the importance of collaboration and mutual learning could be very beneficial to their respective situations. Important instances of collaboration were the creation of DNA banks, the communication with institutions, national or international courts or UN special procedures. The need for strategic initiatives to report cases of enforced disappearances was a common demand panellists made on behalf of victims.

Several panellists also highlighted the frequent retraumatisation of family members who seek answers from state authorities who, most likely, have also been involved in the enforced disappearance of their loved one. To that extent, there exists much value in international litigation, granted that domestic remedies are mostly unavailable or unsafe. For international litigation, creating an enforced disappearances database would be very helpful. Next to legal support, however, psychological support is also much needed, not only where the enforced person is confirmed dead but also in times of uncertainty. Many panellists, therefore, advocated for an integrated mental health approach to the search for disappeared persons and the justice process. 

The speakers also stressed the importance of states collaborating to provide information, open procedures for memory, truth, justice, reparation, and create guarantees of non-repetition and accountability. Additionally, creating training and capacity-building programs for the officials who have to carry out the search programs plays a significant part. In short, all panellists defended a strong presence of the rule of law in the face of new negationist movements to help empower victims of enforced disappearances.

UN mechanisms

Another panel was composed of different members of the United Nations Special Procedures, the United Nations Working Group on Enforced Disappearances, the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, as well as members of civil society organisations from different parts of the world. 

The session focused on explaining the role of these special procedures and the importance of the petitions submitted to them by victims, both in the search for effective justice and as a matter of memory and recognition. The UN Special Procedures representatives recalled that they have a mediating role and form a channel of communication between the families, the NGOs that represent them, and the state concerned. They also explained practically the differences between the mandates of the various special procedures, the Committee on Enforced Disappearances having the competence to intervene only in the states that have ratified the Convention on Enforced Disappearances. At the same time, the collaboration between the different mechanisms was emphasised.

The speakers also encouraged NGOs and victims to collaborate informally with special procedures to improve the quality of communications and the collection of evidence on human rights violations. They stressed the importance of workshops and visits also promoted by civil society to improve collaboration. Overall, the panel underlined that UN mechanisms and their engagement with victims are vital in addressing enforced disappearances and initiating a process of truth and justice, particularly where states are unwilling or unable to investigate cases and provide redress to victims.

The impact of enforced disappearances on children

​​The next panel was composed of activists, victims and experts who explained the different peculiarities, challenges and situations faced by child victims of enforced disappearances. It is important to highlight that there are three ways for a child to be a victim of enforced disappearance: when it is the parents who are the ones who are disappeared, when the child is born during the disappearance of its mother, or when it is the child who is forcibly disappeared, and subsequently usually becomes a victim of illegal adoption. 

 During the panel, the testimony of different activists, all victims of one of the three types of enforced disappearance as children, was presented to learn from their experience. First, Swastika Mali from Nepal, who had also spoken during the opening panel, explained how her father was a victim of enforced disappearance when she was a minor. Beyond suffering from stigma and harassment by her community for being the daughter of a disappeared person, she also faced administrative difficulties due to the lack of knowledge of her father’s legal status and the lack of a death certificate. Swastika Mali also highlighted a prevailing lack of mental health awareness when it comes to child victims, as she suffered from serious self-doubt and suicidal thoughts for which she only received support as an adolescent.

The next speaker, Ismail Moussa, is an expert from Eritrea, working with children whose parents have been forcibly disappeared. He is also the son of a father who disappeared in 1992 and now lives in exile in the United Kingdom. With regard to his work with affected children, he raised awareness about the most pressing challenges. Such challenges causing hardships to his work include the deep psychological trauma faced by the children, social stigmas connected to enforced disappearances and the impossibility of interviewing victims within the country due to a system of repression. Overall, the greatest concern remains the safety of child victims, which is why their stories often need to be told anonymously, rendering the work from the diaspora even more important.

Next up, Martin Moze, a member of Hijas e Hijos por la identidad y la justicia contra el olvido y el silencio and of Red por el derecho a la identidad Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo Barcelona gave his insightful testimony. He is a child born during the enforced disappearance and subsequent murder of his mother, who was afterwards illegally adopted in the context of the last Argentine civil-military dictatorship. During the dictatorship, more than 30,000 people disappeared, many of them thrown into the sea, and more than 500 children were taken and set up for illegal international adoption. Martin Moze’s organisation is a global pioneer in using grandparents’ DNA to find missing grandchildren and creating the national genetic data bank. This process proved fundamental in the search for the disappeared children and in the recognition of their right to identity. Moze further expressed his concern about the rise of extreme right-wing movements that deny past human rights violations and oppose the programs of memory, truth and justice, both in his country Argentina and in other countries, such as Spain.

 Mariela, also known under her adopted name Coline Fanon, was another speaker who had the opportunity to participate in the panel. She is a child who disappeared in Guatemala and later gave up for illegal adoption to a family in Belgium. After presenting her case, she highlighted the importance of the States, both origin and destination of illegally adopted children, assuming their responsibility and helping the victims to find their origins. To avoid retraumatisation, she held that it should not be the victims who lead these processes but rather the responsible states. 

The last participant in the panel was Mari Giovanna Bianchi, a psychologist and expert on children who have been victims of enforced disappearance. She emphasised that these children face significant trauma due to the impossibility of predicting anything in the face of an enforced disappearance. Further, they experience trauma stemming from the difficulty of facing the horror, abandonment, isolation, doubts about their identity or even guilt rooted in their disappearance.

The impact of enforced disappearances on women

Throughout the Congress, it was repeatedly emphasised that the majority of forcibly disappeared persons are men. Yet, the majority of searchers are women, and as those left behind, more often than not, they also face the adverse effects of enforced disappearances. Therefore, it is important to also consider them in the debate on victims of enforced disappearance. Especially in cases of disappeared women, there tends to be even less information about their situation than in the case of male disappearances, which leads to less acknowledgement by the international community and their situation often not being taken into account by international institutions. 

 The activists who participated as speakers in this last panel highlighted the leading role of women in the search for their relatives and the development of the right to truth and justice. They additionally are the main actors involved in the creation of mutual support networks and the development of search and accountability mechanisms. These women frequently sacrifice and dedicate their entire lives to the search for their loved ones, whether they expect to find them dead or alive. Many put their own lives at risk, receive threats and reprisals, and are forced into exile or killed.

 It is important to mention that, on many occasions, when an enforced disappearance occurs, these women and their families find themselves in a situation of great vulnerability, being the ones who have to support the family and begin the search without any support. The activist María Isabel Cruz Bernal, president of an NGO which provides support to families of the disappeared in the state of Sinaloa and participant in the panel, mentioned having received threats the very night before the panel due to her participation in the WCED. Another panellist from the Gambia further reported that, during their search for information, women searchers are often sexually exploited by the state authorities. The discrimination, violence and harassment faced by women searches are further reinforced by intersectional aspects, such as socioeconomic and migrant status, disability, or belonging to an Indigenous group. The psychological impact of enforced disappearances on women is thus very acute: most of them suffer from severe trauma and PTSD, which at times even manifests in physical conditions such as cardiovascular problems.

 Where women are themselves disappeared, such enforced disappearances often take place within the business of human trafficking, but they also serve as means for extortion, mechanisms of control, punishment, warning or social cleansing. Women are often victims of torture, gender-based or sexual violence, and suffer forced pregnancies or abortions. There are places where the stigma connected to the suffering of such human rights violations is so great that disappeared women are not even searched for, and their disappearances are not reported. When they are rescued alive, they are rejected by society, revictimised and criminalised by their communities or relatives, or, in the most severe cases, murdered for reasons of honour.

This panel highlighted the very sensitive gender-based dimension of the crime of enforced disappearances. The gender-specific realities of women need to be included in the discussion of justice for victims of enforced disappearances if truth and justice are truly to be achieved for all.

Conclusion: Six Action Points

The WCED ended with a closing ceremony, identifying the most important findings of the various panels and providing a look into future steps to be taken in the mission of combatting enforced disappearances. During the ceremony, the organisers shared the priorities and considerations that had emerged from the regional meetings held during the sessions. Among the many priorities identified were the protection of witnesses and civil society organisations, victims and family members, psycho-social support, as well as the strengthening of civil society organisations with financial and political means. They also stressed the importance of including new generations in the search, learning from similar situations and lessons from others around the globe, making victims’ rights accessible, and promoting collaboration between national mechanisms, international organisations, and NGOs. 

Overall, the WCED concluded by identifying six action points for immediate and long-term future action. These points were the following: 

1. Support the creation of a regional victim-led network in sub-saharan Africa. 
2. Organisation of annual meetings of women searchers. 
3. Monitoring of the Committee of enforced disappearances sessions. 
4. Promotion of the international convention ratification campaign 
5. Strengthening the capacity of the civil society organisations to engage with UN mechanisms. 
6. Building an international youth network against enforced disappearances. 

The success of the implementation of the action points remains to be seen. However, they provide an important step towards ensuring truth and justice for all those affected by enforced disappearances worldwide. The most urgent call in this regard is to states: their cooperation amongst each other, with the UN and its organisations, and with the victims is the most vital aspect on which the effective combatting of enforced disappearances rests. The practice of enforced disappearance and its concurring human rights violations should be a priority, but it depends on the political will of all states involved.