Tragedy of Enforced Disappearances – Convention – Women & Enforced Disappearances: Victims & Family

Scroll Down to Read Article – WOMEN OF ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCES: OVERLOOKED & INVISIBLE

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https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CED/Pages/ConventionCED.aspx

International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance

Signatories & Ratifications – https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=IV-16&chapter=4&clang=_en

UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances – https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CED/Pages/CEDIndex.aspx

https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Disappearances/Pages/DisappearancesIndex.aspx

UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances

Press Release of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

SEE FULL TEXT:  https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22005&LangID=E

“There Is No Excuse Not to Ratify the Convention for Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance” – UN

GENEVA (30 August 2017) – At a time when enforced disappearance is practiced in every region, and in many countries is increasing, a group of UN human rights experts* urge all Member States to ratify the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.

To mark the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, the UN experts highlight: “It is inadmissible that in 2017, enforced disappearances continue to happen. Every day we receive new cases of persons subjected to enforced disappearances across the world. When this happens, the life of entire families breaks in pieces and the very fabric of the society is damaged. This needs to end, and by ratifying the Convention, States can start the path towards achieving this aim”………..

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https://www.un.org/en/events/disappearancesday/background.shtml

International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances – 30 August

Mourners carry photographs of loved ones who died or who disappeared when the Indonesian military opened fire on a group of pro-independence  supporters during a peaceful demonstration at the Santa Cruz Cemetery in Dili, Timor Leste. UNMIT Photo/Martine Perret

Enforced Disappearances

Some men arrive. They force their way into a family’s home, rich or poor, house, hovel or hut, in a city or in a village, anywhere. They come at any time of the day or night, usually in plain clothes, sometimes in uniform, always carrying weapons. Giving no reasons, producing no arrest warrant, frequently without saying who they are or on whose authority they are acting, they drag off one or more members of the family towards a car, using violence in the process if necessary.

This is often the first act in the drama of an enforced or involuntary disappearance, a particularly heinous violation of human rights and an international crime.

Definition

According to the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, proclaimed by the General Assembly in its resolution 47/133 of 18 December 1992 as a body of principles for all States, an enforced disappearance occurs when: “persons are arrested, detained or abducted against their will or otherwise deprived of their liberty by officials of different branches or levels of Government, or by organized groups or private individuals acting on behalf of, or with the support, direct or indirect, consent or acquiescence of the Government, followed by a refusal to disclose the fate or whereabouts of the persons concerned or a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of their liberty, which places such persons outside the protection of the law.”

Who Is Affected?

The Victims Themselves

The victims are frequently tortured and in constant fear for their lives. They are well aware that their families do not know what has become of them and that the chances are slim that anyone will come to their aid. Having been removed from the protective precinct of the law and “disappeared” from society, they are in fact deprived of all their rights and are at the mercy of their captors.

Even if death is not the final outcome and the victim is eventually released from the nightmare, the physical and psychological scars of this form of dehumanization and the brutality and torture which often accompany it remain.

Friends and Families of the Victims

The families and friends of the victims, experience slow mental anguish, not knowing whether the victim is still alive and, if so, where he or she is being held, under what conditions, and in what state of health. They alternate between hope and despair, wondering and waiting, sometimes for years, for news that may never come. In addition, they are well aware that they, too, are threatened, that they may suffer the same fate themselves and that searching for the truth may expose them to even greater danger.

The family’s distress is frequently compounded by the material consequences of the disappearance. The disappeared person is often the family’s main breadwinner. He or she may be the only member of the family able to cultivate the crops or run the family business. The emotional upheaval is thus exacerbated by material deprivation, made more acute by the costs incurred should they decide to undertake a search. Furthermore, they do not know when —if ever — their loved one is going to return, which makes it difficult for them to adapt to the new situation. In some cases, national legislation may make it impossible to draw a pension or receive other means of support in the absence of a death certificate. Economic and social marginalization is frequently the result.

The serious economic hardships which usually accompany a disappearance are most often borne by women, and it is women who are most often at the forefront of the struggle to resolve the disappearance of family members. In this capacity they may suffer intimidation, persecution and reprisals. When women are themselves direct victims of disappearance, they become particularly vulnerable to sexual and other forms of violence.

Children can also be victims, both directly and indirectly. The disappearance of a child is a clear contravention of a number of provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, including the right to a personal identity. The loss of a parent through disappearance is also a serious violation of a child’s human rights.

Communities

Communities are directly affected by the disappearance of breadwinners, and the degradation of the families’ economic situation and their social marginalization.

Enforced disappearance has frequently been used as a strategy to spread terror within the society. The feeling of insecurity generated by this practice is not limited to the close relatives of the disappeared, but also affects their communities and society as a whole.

A Serious Violation of Human Rights

Having been removed from the protective precinct of the law and “disappeared” from society, victims of enforced disappearance are in fact deprived of all their rights and are at the mercy of their captors. Some of the human rights that enforced disappearances regularly violate are:

• The right to recognition as a person before the law;
• The right to liberty and security of the person;
• The right not to be subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
• The right to life, when the disappeared person is killed;
• The right to an identity;
• The right to a fair trial and to judicial guarantees;
• The right to an effective remedy, including reparation and compensation;
• The right to know the truth regarding the circumstances of a disappearance.

Enforced disappearances also generally violate various economic, social and cultural rights for both the victims as well as their families:

• The right to protection and assistance to the family;
• The right to an adequate standard of living;
• The right to health;
• The right to education.

Both the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court , which came into force on 1 July 2002, and the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, adopted by the UN General Assembly on 20 December 2006, state that, when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed at any civilian population, a “forced disappearance” qualifies as a crime against humanity and, thus, is not subject to a statute of limitations. It gives victims’ families the right to seek reparations, and to demand the truth about the disappearance of their loved ones.

Direct Link to Full 58-Page Report of the International Center for Transitional Justice:

https://www.ictj.org/sites/default/files/ICTJ-Global-Gender-Disappearances-2015.pdf

https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/amrita-kapur/overlooked-and-invisible-women-of-enforced-disappearances

Overlooked & Invisible: The Women of Enforced Disappearances

The overwhelming majority of the victims of enforced disappearances are men. What happens to the women left behind?

Flickr/Vikalpa. Some rights reserved. 

By Amrita Kapur

In the last 35 + years, tens of thousands of individuals have been forcibly “disappeared” through conflict or repression in more than 80 countries around the world. The right of families to know the fate of their missing loved ones was first internationally recognized by the UN Human Rights Committee in 1983 with respect to Uruguay, and judicially recognized by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in a Honduran case of enforced disappearance in 1988. Since then, government responses to the violation have evolved to encompass truth seeking, exhumations, trials, reparations and reform measures.

These measures have focused on the disappeared, 70-94% of whom are men. However, the 2006 International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance defines victims of the crime as both the disappeared and those who have suffered harm as the direct result of an enforced disappearance. This has important implications for women, who comprise the majority of those left behind to pick up the pieces after a disappearance, haunted by the hope that their loved one is still alive.

New research by the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) shows that the enduring impact of enforced disappearances on women is not as well known or adequately addressed by governments and societies. Women—as the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters of the disappeared—play particular roles and experience exacerbated hardships after a disappearance. Due to gender inequalities in many cultures, they experience heightened and intersecting economic, legal, social, and psychological harms as a result of losing a male family member, who is often the breadwinner and head-of-household.

This research, comprising first-hand stories from female relatives of the disappeared in Lebanon and Nepal as well as comparative analysis across 31 countries, reveals trends of ongoing victimization after a disappearance as a result of increased poverty, family conflict and psychological trauma. It also identifies how various truth, justice and reparative measures have overlooked these experiences, and where innovative responses have proven successful in offering redress.

The loss of the family breadwinner or head-of-household forces women into low-paying, insecure jobs, often far away from their families, increasing their risk of exploitation and jeopardizing their children’s well-being and education. The uncertain legal status of the disappeared (who are not considered officially alive or dead) compounds the family’s financial insecurity, as wives often cannot access family assets and bank accounts held in their husbands’ names or social benefits reserved for married women.

The only option for many wives may be to declare their husbands dead, and even then, death certificates may not be available until some time after the disappearance. Many women are reluctant to do this because of a sense of guilt of abandoning hope. At least one-fifth of wives of the missing in Nepal interviewed by ICTJ reported that they had chosen to declare their missing husbands dead. Although there may have been other factors involved, it is likely that some of these women made the decision out of economic pressure created by the design of Nepal’s Interim Relief Program, which initially granted lump-sum awards of 100,000 NRs to the next-of-kin of the deceased and just 25,000 NRs to the next-of-kin of the disappeared. Creating a separate legal category of “absence due to disappearance,” like in Peru, Argentina, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Chile, has proven to help families overcome some of the practical–and patriarchal–challenges.

Socially, women may even be blamed for the disappearance of a loved one or be ostracized by their family for being a financial burden. In Kashmir, the term “half-widows” was coined to describe the loss of social status experienced by wives of the disappeared, while in several patri-local cultures, including Kashmir and Sri Lanka, re-marriage carries a stigma.

Consequently, wives of the disappeared may stay with families who resent their presence, partly because they risk losing custody of their children if they leave. Beyond this, they also suffer from a condition now called “ambiguous loss” (which is different to post-traumatic stress disorder), due to the ongoing uncertainty and stress associated with the enforced disappearance.

Naturally, family members are compelled to search for their disappeared loved ones, even as they struggle to live with perpetual uncertainty. This puts women on the front lines of the search for truth about the missing and disappeared, sometimes at great personal risk. One woman interviewed by ICTJ in Nepal described her experience of exploitation: “He took me to different places to find my husband. And then he started asking me to come and meet him in hotels at night.”

Understanding women’s specific needs will help governments and others to design programs and set up institutions that successfully address the enduring impact of enforced disappearance on them and society.

Since 1974, at least 12 official investigative commissions have specifically examined enforced disappearances, and truth commissions have conducted research, investigations, public hearings and exhumations to uncover the fate of the disappeared. Nevertheless, taking a gender-neutral approach has proven to silence women victims; instead, truth commissions need to be designed and implemented with gender-sensitivity if they are to gather women’s stories and accurately record the full range of human rights violations committed. Successful strategies include outreach approaches that target women, creating safe women-only spaces for giving testimony, and using specific interviewing techniques.

The experiences of female victims in Colombia highlight the need for simple, accessible reparations programs and state assistance for women to overcome social inequalities in literacy, education, and resources. Otherwise, women will be unlikely to benefit, particularly if the process is costly, as in Guatemala, or if compensation is paid into bank accounts that women do not control of or have access to, as occurred in Nepal. In a recent study, 74% of wives of the disappeared in Nepal reported that the burden of proving that an enforced disappearance took place was a challenge to accessing relief. Solutions include assisting women to obtain the required documents and open bank accounts, and providing other forms of psychosocial, housing, educational and healthcare benefits as reparations.

Symbolic reparations are also important, in order to facilitate public grieving and the healing process. They must be done in consultation with relatives and communities to prevent re-traumatization and communal rejection. It is also critical that memorials to the disappeared acknowledge women as activists and advocates for truth and justice to overcome stereotypes of women as passive victims. Memorials in the Philippines and Chile depicting women as activists against political repression are positive examples.

Enforced disappearance continues to be used around the world as a tool of terror and repression, including in Kenya and Syria. Lessons learned about how to take a gender-sensitive approach to truth, exhumations, reburials, reparations, justice, and reform is crucial to redressing the harms endured by victims and their broader communities.

Ultimately, the degree to which programs and measures are effective in addressing enforced disappearances, and their lasting impact on victims, depends on whether they respond to women and their specific experiences. Revealing the enduring impact of this violation on women in Nepal, Lebanon and beyond reinforces how much work we still have to do.