A/RES/59/200. Resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, 2004

• Resolution Number: A/RES/59/200
• Year: 2004
• Session: 59th
• Issuer: General Assembly of the United Nation

United Nations A/RES/59/200

General Assembly Distr.: General

23 March 2005

Fifty-ninth session

Agenda item 105 (b)

04-48826

Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 20 December 2004

[on the report of the Third Committee (A/59/503/Add.2)]

59/200. Question of enforced or involuntary disappearances

The General Assembly

,

Guided

by the purposes and principles set forth in the Charter of the United

Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,

1

the International Covenants

on Human Rights

2

and the other relevant international human rights instruments,

Recalling

its resolution 33/173 of 20 December 1978 concerning disappeared

persons and its resolutions on the question of enforced or involuntary

disappearances, in particular resolution 57/215 of 18 December 2002,

Recalling also

its resolution 47/133 of 18 December 1992 proclaiming the

Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance as a

body of principles for all States,

Bearing in mind

Commission on Human Rights resolution 2004/40 of 19 April

2004,

3

Deeply concerned

, in particular, by the intensification of enforced

disappearances, including arrest, detention and abduction, where these are part of or

amount to enforced disappearances, in various regions of the world and by the

growing number of reports concerning the harassment, ill-treatment and

intimidation of witnesses of disappearances or relatives of persons who have

disappeared,

Taking note with interest

of the initiatives taken at the national and

international levels in order to end impunity,

Acknowledging

the fact that acts of enforced disappearance, as defined in the

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,

4

come within the jurisdiction of

the Court as crimes against humanity,

_______________

1 Resolution 217 A (III).

2 Resolution 2200 A (XXI), annex.

3 See Official Records of the Economic and Social Council, 2004, Supplement No. 3 (E/2004/23), chap. II,

sect. A.

4 Official Records of the United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment

of an International Criminal Court, Rome, 15 June–17 July 1998, vol. I: Final documents (United Nations

publication, Sales No. E.02.I.5), sect. A.