The Enforced Disappearance Crime and its Ways to Combat It: Study from the Perspective of International law
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35682/jjlps.v14i4.394Keywords:
crime of enforced disappearance, crime against humanity, systematic attack, victimsAbstract
This research deals with the study of enforced disappearance from the perspective of international law, as this crime has been a concern to the international community for a long time. It is considered a crime that prevails in many countries whose people suffer from dictatorship, repression, and civil wars. The seriousness of this crime lies in considering it a means for the repressive regimes of states and their militias to commit all heinous crimes against their people and opponents in secret, as this crime is based on the concealment of the victim by an unknown party, or in an unknown place, without informing his relatives or concerned authorities of his fate, which makes him vulnerable to abuse without accountability. Therefore, the international community intended to confront this crime by all means. Hence, given the importance of the crime of enforced disappearance in the world, and due to the lack of studies related to it, this study came to address the most prominent themes surrounding this crime, as it first discussed its concept and then shed light on the efforts of the international community to combat this crime.
Based on the preceding, this study was divided as follows: The first section: the nature of the crime of enforced disappearance. The second section: the most important international instruments confronting enforced disappearances. The third section: the most important international bodies confronting enforced disappearances. At the end of this research, a set of results were reached, perhaps the most major of them: that the crime of enforced disappearance is one of the serious and emerging crimes in international law, and this reason is perhaps one of the main reasons why the international community has not yet been able to achieve tangible results in the field of combating it. Despite the importance of the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance and the transcendence of the principles it contained, and its quest to eliminate the phenomenon of enforced disappearance as it represents a serious violation of human rights, it does not impose legal obligations on states. Therefore, the value of this document is only literary. The research also concludes that the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance has yet to achieve its desired goal due to the lack of monitoring and deterrent mechanisms that would compel states to implement it and direct them to abide by it. The study also reached a set of recommendations, including the need for countries to immediately join the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance as a first and essential step to combating this crime, and without reservation to any of its provisions, and to find ways and implement serious measures that would States parties to the Convention on Enforced disappearance are obligated, in addition to the need for States parties to the Convention to cooperate effectively and with the Committee, and to take all measures stipulated in the Convention because their common goal is to reduce crimes of enforced disappearance.