DRAFT INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION AGAINST ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCES

UN COMMISSION ON HR APPROVES TO STUDY THE DRAFT INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION
AGAINST ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCES.

Statement by FEDEFAM (Federation of Relatives of Detained and
Disappeared People):

On April 24, 2001, the UN Commission on Human rights that met in Geneva,
approved by overwhelming majority the creation of an Intersessional
Working Group and the appointment of an expert to study the Draft
International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced
Disappearance. In its Resolution, United States requested that these two
subjects were put under voting; after strong debates in which the
interventions of the Argentinean and Mexican Delegations, in the name of
GRULAC, Francia and Cuba stood out, the Resolution was approved.

The voting was 4 votes against - i.e. suppressing the creation of the
Working group (USA, India, Japan and Malaysia) and 35 in favour of
maintaining it. 5 votes to suppress the expert (USA, India, Japan,
Canada, Malaysia) and 37 in favour of keeping him/her. The rest of the
resolution was adopted by consensus.

For FEDEFAM, in the year of its 20th anniversary, this is a historical
decision and it is the result of the undeniable efforts of relatives,
lawyers of recognised international trajectory, human rights' defenders
and international organisations - among them the decisive impulse of the
International Commission of Lawyers, Amnesty International, HRW, FEDEFAM
and AFAD among others.

Although the enforced disappearances have been recognised by customary
international law, by the ICC Rome Statute and those of the Ad hoc
International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda,
as a specific international crime, regrettably there is not still any
comprehensive treaty of protection.

For that reason, the adoption of a legally binding instrument as a
Convention would elevate to the highest rank the international concern
about one of the most atrocious forms of violence against life and human
dignity and would turn into an effective resource of protection that
would allow thousands of people affected world-wide to confront their
state of legal helplessness.

The adoption of the Resolution by the Commission on Human Rights paves
the way for an independent expert to impel the study of the Draft
Convention and for the creation of a working group that in the near
future can submit an agreed upon text to the Commission for its
definitive adoption as an international treaty.

The importance of the project lies in its necessity, as thousands of
disappearances continue to be committed in all the regions of the world
for various motives, being a problem without solution. Also, the
importance of the project is in its wholeness since it includes rights
and issues of protection and prevention, necessary for its processing,
that are not resolved per se in the sole standardisation of crime in the
ICC Rome Statute. Among them:

a) The right to Truth, particularly typical of the enforced
disappearances, that has proved to be difficult in its application by
the states and it is not guaranteed in any Conventional instrument.
This unresolved legitimate right of those affected has led to new
important crises in the processes of democratic transitions, proving
that the adopted authoritarian solutions for "resolving" the crimes,
have done nothing but delaying them.

b) The right of equality before the law and the right to be protected by
it: That it has been denied systematically to victims under systems of
administration of justice that have acted in a discriminatory way with
regard to the victims of the enforced disappearances and their
relatives, during dictatorships as well as democracies.

This discrimination has been encouraged because the interposed judicial
complaints are annulled by unlimited impunity laws of the executive or
legislative power, or because the trials are undertaken by military
courts, or because the norms of the due process during a trial are not
applied equally to victims and perpetrators.

The great impunity resulting in the treatment of the enforced
disappearances in the world is evidence that the perspective of the
victims has not been important and that the balance has leaned towards
unlimited favours and rights for the perpetrators, against the basic
right of the victims to be treated with equity.

c) The right to the Body of the disappeared: This right typical of the
enforced disappearances is not regulated conventionally at universal
level. Related case law in the international law of human rights is
quite scarce, and the efforts made in the domestic legislation are
almost useless. This right, repeatedly denied to the relatives of the
disappeared, is played down and appears to be of little importance and
is not taken into account by the state policies concerned in the
treatment of the enforced disappearances in the countries where they
have been perpetrated. The right to mourning and to the body goes along
with the right to Truth and is an integral part of justice, the
rehabilitation and the moral redress necessary to restore rights of
those affected.

Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, April 24, 2001.

BY THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF FEDEFAM
Martha Ocampo de Vasquez - President
Judith Galarza Fields - Executive Secretary
FEDEFAM: 20 years of fight against the enforced disappearances and
Impunity.
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RELATED LINKS:
Draft international convention on the protection of all persons from
forced disappearance [ESP/SPA]
http://www.derechos.net/doc/tratados/des.html
[The English version may be acceded by introducing the document symbol
"E/CN.4/Sub.2/1998/19" (annex) into the search rectangle at:
http://www.unhchr.ch/SearchForm.nsf/SymbolNumberSearchEng?OpenForm ]
Web site on Project Disappeared by Derechos and Nizkor
http://www.desaparecidos.org/eng.html
Disappeared in Algeria
http://www.desaparecidos.org/alg/eng.html
Disappeared in Argentina:
http://www.desaparecidos.org/arg/eng.html
Disappeared in Brazil
http://www.desaparecidos.org/brazil/eng.html
Disappeared in Colombia
http://www.desaparecidos.org/colombia/eng.html
Disappeared in Chile
http://www.desaparecidos.org/chile/eng.html
Disappeared in Mexico
http://www.desaparecidos.org/mex/eng.html/
Disappeared in Peru
http://www.desaparecidos.org/peru/eng.html
Disappeared in Uruguay
http://www.desaparecidos.org/uru/eng.html
Disappeared in Western Sahara
http://www.desaparecidos.org/sahara/eng.html
Disappeared in Turkey
http://www.desaparecidos.org/turkey/eng.html
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