International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ePub)

Year after year, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has requested that the fate of all those who are unaccounted for after their arrest in situations of armed conflict or internal violence be urgently clarified, on the occasion of the International Day of the Disappeared, which was held last Sunday. "Regardless of the legitimacy of the reason that leads to an arrest, no one has the right to keep a person's fate or whereabouts secret, nor to deny that they are being detained, since it is a practice contrary to rights humans".

The book incorporates the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.

Currently, there are hundreds of thousands of people missing as a result of an armed conflict or situations of internal violence. "Often their families do not even know if they are still alive", the suffering caused by this uncertainty can seriously hamper reconciliation and recovery in post-conflict societies and affirms that families have the right to know what happened to their relatives, therefore all the necessary measures must be taken to resolve the problem, including, first of all, measures to prevent disappearances.

No one has the right to keep a person's fate or whereabouts secret.