EDITORIAL
by Mary Aileen
Diez-Bacalso
CONVENTION NOW!
The Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD), in no small
measure, feels victorious! The United Nations Inter-Sessional Open-Ended
Working Group to Elaborate A Draft Legally-Binding Normative Instrument for
the Protection of All Persons from Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances
finally approved the text of the United Nations Convention for the
Protection of All Persons from Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.
Initiated by the Latin American Federation of Associations of Relatives of
Disappeared-Detainees (FEDEFAM) and much later actively joined by
AFAD and supported by a number of international organizations from other
continents, the struggle for an international treaty bore initial, yet
significant fruit with the unanimous approval of the text on September
22, 2005 in Geneva, Switzerland.
AFAD dedicates such a victory to all the world’s desaparecidos.
As the Federation stated in its oral intervention, the last speech presented
during that most historic moment of the approval of the text, “the
disappeared all over the world, wherever they may be, are all as victorious
as we are during this historic success.”
Lest we forget, AFAD salutes His Excellency Bernard Kessedjian, French
Ambassador to Geneva who headed the Working Group to draft the international
treaty, for his able leadership and unflinching commitment to the cause of
the disappeared and their families. Without him, such a commendable process
of completing the text and more importantly, ensuring that no unprincipled
compromise vis-à-vis the victims’ right to truth, justice, redress and
recuperation of the historical memory of the disappeared would never have
been achieved. It was one of the fastest drafting processes in the
history of the United Nations. Within a span of only three years
as compared to other international instruments, the process was rather
speedy. To you, Honorable Kessedjian, we express our never-ending
gratitude.
To the delegations of the United Nations member-states who struggled hard
despite the difficulty in the negotiation process, we also send our profound
appreciation with the hope that you will continue to support up to the
treaty’s adoption, ratification and serious implementation.
The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced
or Involuntary Disappearances is significantly important for the struggle
against disappearances especially in Asia where the largest number of cases
were submitted to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or
Involuntary Disappearances. Furthermore, with these continuing cases
of disappearances in the continent which are being committed systematically
and on a massive scale, the absence of any regional human rights
protection mechanism, be it a Convention, a Commission or a Court,
deems it imperative that an international treaty protecting people from
disappearances be established and ratified especially by Asian governments.
A huge step in our continuing struggle will be the establishment of a
Convention with an autonomous monitoring body to be completed with its
adoption by the United Nations General Assembly and ratification by as many
UN member-states as possible. For it to enter into force, it needs at
least, twenty governments to sign. If the struggle to have the text
approved by the Working Group was, to say the least, uphill, the lobby for
ratifications could be equally challenging.
To ensure implementation, it is essential to campaign for the enactment of
domestic laws criminalizing enforced or involuntary disappearances.
Not a single Asian country considers enforced or involuntary disappearances
a distinct crime. The anti-enforced disappearance bill in the
Philippines, if enacted into law, would be the first in Asia. It could set a good example to many Asian governments, whose
general support to the convention is still found wanting.
For certain, the Convention is not the end-all and be-all of our collective
struggle against enforced or involuntary disappearances. The forms of
struggle to resolve the cases of the past and to ensure non-recurrence are
multi-faceted. With the victory that we have achieved through the
approved text of the Convention, we are all the more equipped with the
necessary instrument that will bring our struggle to greater heights. With
the present victory that we have garnered, the realization of the
much-cherished dream for a world without
desaparecidos, while full of obstacles, may not be distant anymore.
NO to Enforced or Involuntary
Disappearances! NO to Impunity! CONVENTION NOW!
