UN: End ‘Disappearances’ Worldwide

[struggle4progress]

Source: Human Rights Watch

International Convention against Enforced Disappearance Taking Effect
December 22, 2010

(New York) - The Convention against Enforced Disappearance, which takes effect on December 23, 2010, should strengthen international efforts to end this horrific practice ...

The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance enters into force one month after it is ratified by 20 nations. On November 23, Iraq became the 20th country to ratify the treaty and Brazil has also since done so ...

In Pakistan, hundreds have disappeared since 2001, while the Bush administration in the United States disappeared dozens of "ghost prisoners" - individuals held in secret detention centers, including in Europe. There have been at least 30,000 disappearances in Sri Lanka since the late 1980s; hundreds have been reported in the Philippines and Thailand; and Indian security forces were implicated in 4,000 to 10,000 disappearances in Kashmir in the 1990s ...

The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance was adopted on December 20, 2006. When it was opened for signature on February 6, 2007, 57 countries signed immediately. The 21 countries that have ratified the convention thus far are: Albania, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, France, Germany, Honduras, Iraq, Japan, Kazakhstan, Mali, Mexico, Nigeria, Paraguay, Senegal, Spain, and Uruguay ...



Read more: http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/12/22/un-end-disappearances-worldwide

---

International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance
... Article 2
For the purposes of this Convention, "enforced disappearance" is considered to be the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law ...
Article 4
Each State Party shall take the necessary measures to ensure that enforced disappearance constitutes an offence under its criminal law ...
Article 11
1. The State Party in the territory under whose jurisdiction a person alleged to have committed an offence of enforced disappearance is found shall, if it does not extradite that person or surrender him or her to another State in accordance with its international obligations or surrender him or her to an international criminal tribunal whose jurisdiction it has recognized, submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution ... http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/disappearance-convention.htm

STATUS AS AT : 23-12-2010 12:37:30 EDT
CHAPTER IV
HUMAN RIGHTS
16 . International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance
New York, 20 December 2006
<list of signatories and ratifications -- US has neither signed nor ratified>
http://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=IV-16&chapter=4&lang=en

[Ghost Dog]

1. Hard. Hard, fuck, even to k&r.

But k&r nevertheless and fuck the consequences.

[hootinholler]

2. Of course we've ignored this. n/t

[Downwinder]

3. Interesting, there seems to be a lack of English speaking countries

ratifying this convention.

[UpInArms]

4. US has neither signed nor ratified

I guess being a main perpetrator or financier of such criminalities, would make ratification difficult.

[struggle4progress]

5. That would be the most natural guess