Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances

A/HRC/RES/21/4View PDF

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

A Resolution of the Human Rights Council, under agenda item 3 Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development, published in 2012.

What other versions does this mandate have?

9 versions · 2008–2023

This is an older version — the most recent is A/HRC/RES/54/14

Year	Symbol	Title	Word length	Text similarity
2023	A/HRC/RES/54/14	Enforced or involuntary disappearances	1,426	87%Compare
2020	A/HRC/RES/45/3	Enforced or involuntary disappearances	1,289	94%Compare
2017	A/HRC/RES/36/6	Enforced or involuntary disappearances	1,300	63%Compare
2014	A/HRC/RES/27/1	Enforced or involuntary disappearances	1,085	26%Compare
2012	A/HRC/RES/21/4	Enforced or involuntary disappearances	1,803	29%Compare

What subjects does this mandate have?

4 subjects

Declarations Disappearance of Persons Recommendations Working Groups

What’s in this document?

33 operative paragraphs

I.International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance

Recognizes that the implementation of the International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance will be a significant contribution to ending impunity and to the promotion and protection of all human rights for all;

Welcomes the entry into force of the Convention on 23 December 2010, as well as the work achieved by the Committee on Enforced Disappearances during its two first sessions, and encourages all States parties to the Convention to support and promote the Committee’s work and to implement its recommendations;

Calls upon all States that have not yet signed, ratified or acceded to the Convention to consider doing so as a matter of priority, and to also consider the option provided for in articles 31 and 32 of the Convention regarding the Committee on Enforced Disappearances;

Requests the Secretary-General and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to continue their intensive efforts to assist States in becoming parties to the Convention, with a view to achieving universal adherence;

II.Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance

Recognizes the importance of the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance as a body of principles for all States designed to punish enforced disappearances, to prevent their commission and to help victims of such acts and their families to seek fair, prompt and adequate reparation;

Notes that 2012 marks the twentieth anniversary of the adoption by the General Assembly of the Declaration;

Urges all States to promote and to give full effect to the Declaration;

Encourages all States to translate the Declaration into their languages in order to assist its global dissemination and the ultimate goal of preventing enforced disappearances;

III.Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances

Takes note of the report submitted by the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances³ and of the recommendations contained therein;

³A/HRC/19/58/Rev.1.

Stresses the importance of the work of the Working Group, and encourages it to pursue the fulfilment of its mandate as set out in Human Rights Council resolution 16/16;

Welcomes the cooperation established between the Working Group and the Committee on Enforced Disappearances, within the framework of their respective mandates;

Takes note with interest of all the general comments of the Working Group, including the most recent one on the right to recognition as a person before the law in the context of enforced disappearances, which are aimed at helping States to apply the Declaration in a way that is most conducive to the protection of all persons from enforced disappearances;

Calls upon States that have not provided for a long period of time substantive replies concerning claims of enforced disappearances in their countries to do so, and to give due consideration to relevant recommendations concerning this issue made by the Working Group in its reports;

Urges States to cooperate with the Working Group to help it to carry out its mandate effectively and, in that framework, to give serious consideration to responding favourably to its requests for visits to their countries;

Encourages the Working Group, in accordance with its working methods, to continue to provide concerned States with relevant and detailed information concerning allegations of enforced disappearances in order to facilitate a prompt and substantive response to these communications without prejudice to the need for concerned States to cooperate with the Working Group;

Expresses:

Its thanks to the many Governments that have cooperated with the Working Group and replied to its requests for information, and the Governments that have accepted visits of the Working Group to their countries, requesting them to give all necessary attention to the Working Group’s recommendations and inviting them to inform the Working Group of any action that they take on them;

Its appreciation to the Governments that are investigating, cooperating at the international and bilateral levels, and have developed or are developing appropriate mechanisms to investigate any claims of enforced disappearance brought to their attention, and encourages all the Governments concerned to expand their efforts in this area;

IV.General principles

Takes note of the reports submitted by the Office of the High Commissioner, including their recommendations, on programmes and other measures for the protection of witnesses implemented within the framework of criminal procedures relating to gross violations of human rights and serious violations of international humanitarian law,⁴ on the seminar on the importance of archives as a means to guarantee the right to the truth⁵ and on the obligation of States to investigate serious violations of human rights, and the use of forensic genetics;⁶

⁴A/HRC/15/33.

⁵A/HRC/17/21.

⁶A/HRC/18/25 and Corr.1.

Urges States:

To prevent the occurrence of enforced disappearances, including by guaranteeing that any person deprived of liberty is held solely in officially recognized and supervised places of detention, guaranteeing access to all places of detention by authorities and institutions whose competence in this regard has been recognized by the concerned State, maintaining official, accessible, up-to-date registers and/or records of detainees, and ensuring that detainees are brought before a competent authority promptly after detention as provided for by article 10 of the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance;

To work to eradicate the culture of impunity for the perpetrators of enforced disappearances and to elucidate cases of enforced disappearance as a crucial step in effective prevention;

To prevent and investigate with special attention the enforced disappearance of persons belonging to vulnerable groups, especially children, and the enforced disappearance of women, as they may become particularly vulnerable to sexual violence and other forms of violence, and to bring the perpetrators of those enforced disappearances to justice;

To ensure that their competent authorities proceed immediately to conduct impartial inquiries in all circumstances where there is reason to believe that an enforced disappearance has occurred in territory under their jurisdiction and, if such belief is borne out, to ensure that all the perpetrators of enforced or involuntary disappearances are brought to justice;

To continue their efforts to elucidate the fate of disappeared persons and to ensure that competent authorities in charge of investigation and prosecution are provided with adequate means and resources to resolve cases and bring perpetrators to justice, including after considering establishing, where appropriate, specific judicial mechanisms or truth and reconciliation commissions that complement the justice system;

To consider the use of forensic genetics to contribute to the identification of the remains of the victims of enforced or involuntary disappearances and to address the issue of impunity;

To take steps to provide adequate protection to witnesses of enforced or involuntary disappearances, human rights defenders acting against enforced disappearances, and the lawyers and families of disappeared persons against any intimidation, persecution, reprisals or ill-treatment to which they might be subjected, paying special attention to women as relatives of disappeared persons in the context of their struggle to resolve the disappearance of members of their families;

To make provisions in their legal systems for victims of enforced or involuntary disappearances or their families to seek fair, prompt and adequate reparation and, in addition, where appropriate, to consider symbolic measures recognizing the suffering of victims and restoring their dignity and reputation;

To adopt an archival policy that ensures that all archives pertaining to human rights violations related to enforced disappearances held by all types of institutions are preserved, protected and accessible in accordance with applicable law, in order to habilitate victims to realize their right to the truth to judicial accountability and non-judicial truth seeking process and for reparations;

To address the specific needs of the families of disappeared persons;

To take appropriate steps to address the legal uncertainty under domestic law of the absence of the disappeared person and faced by their family members, the next-of-kin and others connected to him or her, including by considering the possibility to put in place a system of declaration of absence as a result of enforced disappearance;

To intensify their cooperation with civil society organizations that deal with the issue of enforced disappearances;

Decides to continue consideration of the question of enforced or involuntary disappearances in accordance with its programme of work.

  The resolutions and decisions adopted by the Human Rights Council will be contained in the report of the Council on its twenty-first session (A/HRC/21/2), chap. I.