A 'gruesome' form of rights violations: enforced or involuntary disappearances.

Enforced or involuntary disappearances "constitute the most comprehensive denial of human rights in our time, bringing boundless agony to the victims, ruinous consequences to the families ... and moral havoc to the societies in which they occur", stated a report (E/CN.4/1985/15) issued by the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.

"It is indeed a gruesome form of human rights violation that warrants the continued attention of the international community and in particular that of the Commission on Human Rights", added the report, which was reviewed by the Commission on Human Rights during its recent session at Geneva.

The report--the fifth since the Group's inception--recalled that in many cases, disappearances had followed internal disturbances in the countries concerned as the Governments and other forces involved had deliberately employed the "technique of disappearances" as a means of solving their political problems. Although the phenomenon had ceased in some countries, it had appeared in others and still remained a constant feature of the overall human rights situation in the world.

Recommendations

The Group recommended that the Commission on Human Rights: appeal to Governments of countries where the phenomenon of enforced or involuntary disappearances had reached "alarming proportions" to consider setting up "national organs" to investigate reports of missing persons; appeal to Governments to respond to requests from the Group for information on the measures they had taken to investigate disappearances in pursuance of Assembly resolution 33/173; consider drafting an international instrument on enforced or involuntary disappearances; and consider renewing the Group's mandate for two years.

The report said the Group had received some 2,900 reports on enforced or involuntary disappearances in 1984. At the end of that year, some 1,800 cases containing sufficient information for "meaningful investigations" had been transmitted to "the various Governments concerned".

Also during 1984, the Group said, it had received numerous reports of persons who had been arrested or abducted and had been missing for one, two or three weeks or even months, and then had reappeared one day in a public place. According to the relatives reporting those cases, no explanation had been given by the authorities of the reasons for the arrest or abduction or the reappearance of their family members. Such cases had been normally submitted to the...