The Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances released a report about enforced and involuntary disappearances examined from 16 May 2020 to 21 May 2021. During the reporting period, the Working Group transmitted 651 new cases of enforced disappearance to 30 States.
This working group is the first United Nations human rights thematic mechanism m to be established with a universal mandate, whose primary task is to assist families in determining the fate or whereabouts of their family members who are reportedly disappeared.
In Turkey, the working group reported 86 outstanding cases at the beginning of the reporting period. Only 2 cases were clarified during the reporting period by the government.
The working group also documented cases of extraterritorial transfers that led to enforced disappearances with the participation, support or acquiescence of other States, in an attempt to capture their nationals or third-country nationals, often as part of purported counter-terrorism operations.
Serious allegations of gross human rights violations, including enforced disappearances, were reported to the Working Group shortly before, during or in the immediate aftermath of alleged transnational transfers from Kosovo to Turkey. The report highlights its concern about the continued justification of extraterritorial abductions and forced returns under the pretext of combating terrorism and protecting national security. The Working Group therefore urges the Government of Turkey to prevent and terminate enforced disappearances, as stipulated in article 2 of the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. The Working Group recalls that no circumstances whatsoever, whether a threat of war, a state of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked to justify enforced disappearances.
One the other part, the report points out the impunity surrounding the perpetrators of enforced disappearances and its concern at the tendency to resort to transnational transfers. The Working group recalled that these transfers meet all the elements of the crime of enforced disappearance when before, during or after them information on the fate or whereabouts of the individual concerned is not revealed or disclosed. In addition, those transfers provoke denial of justice as long as individuals are deprived of liberty, and violate the rights to an effective remedy and fair trial.
By Morgane Bizien
Featured image is taken from /stockholmcf.org
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