Putting in Place Processes and Mechanisms to Prevent and Eradicate Enforced Disappearances around the World

Abstract

On Monday 15 July 2013 the United Nations (UN) Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (Working Group) held a commemorative event at the opening of its 100th session at UN Headquarters in New York. The Working Group was established in 1980 and holds three sessions a year. It had by then held one hundred sessions over its thirty-three years of existence. At the event, it was noted that enforced disappearances are not a crime of the past; they remain a phenomenon that continues to affect all regions of the world. The Working Group called for new strategies to tackle enforced or involuntary disappearances and highlighted the impunity that prevails for this crime globally.