Concept
An enforced disappearance (or forced disappearance) is the secret abduction or imprisonment of a person by a state, political organization, or by a third party, with the authorization of another state, political organization, or a third party, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the person's fate and whereabouts, with the intent of placing the victim outside the protection of the law. According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which came into force on July 1, 2002, when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed at any civilian population, a "forced disappearance" qualifies as a crime against humanity, not subject to a statute of limitations, in international criminal law. On December 20, 2006, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. Often, forced disappearance implies murder whereby a victim is abducted, may be illegally detained, and is often tortured during interrogation, ultimately killed, and the body disposed of secretly. The party committing the murder has plausible deniability as there is no evidence of the victim's death. States are obliged under international human rights law to return the remains of the forcibly disappeared persons to their families. In international human rights law, disappearances at the hands of the state has been labelled as "enforced" or "forced disappearances" since the Vienna Declaration and Program of Action. For example, the practice is specifically addressed by the OAS's Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons. There is also evidence that enforced disappearances occur systematically during armed conflict, such as Nazi Germany's Night and Fog program, which may constitute war crimes. In February 1980, the United Nations established the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, "the first United Nations human rights thematic mechanism to be established with a universal mandate.
