Every year on 30 August, the world commemorates the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearance, while thousands of Arab families still wait for their loved ones who have fallen victim to this crime, which is considered one of the most serious human rights violations. It may even amount to a crime against humanity if it is practised systematically on a large scale, in which case it becomes a crime that never ends.
Over the years, Alkarama has submitted hundreds of individual complaints to the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances and the Committee on Enforced Disappearances involving victims from various Arab countries, especially those that have witnessed armed conflicts, such as Iraq, Syria, Algeria, Libya, Sudan, and Yemen, in addition to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
What is Enforced Disappearance?
Article 2 of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance defines enforced disappearance as "the arrest, detention, abduction, or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which places such a person outside the protection of the law."
The practice of enforced disappearance has been widespread in Arab countries for decades, and thousands of families still do not know the fate of their loved ones. The cases pending before the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances are only the tip of the iceberg.
Enforced disappearances are not just used to silence political opponents, journalists or human rights defenders. It is also used as a tool to terrorise entire communities. This phenomenon has worsened in several countries during armed conflicts. The practice often coincides with other serious human rights violations, such as torture, as victims are deprived of legal protection and remedies.
The Human Rights Committee considers the psychological suffering experienced by the families of victims of enforced disappearance as a form of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment.
Iraq
According to several international organisations such as the International Commission on Missing Persons, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances, Iraq tops the list of countries with the highest number of enforced disappearances. Estimates of the number of missing persons in the last five decades range from 250,000 to one million.
Alkarama has been following the issue of enforced disappearances in Iraq with great concern for years and has submitted dozens of complaints to the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances and the Committee on Enforced Disappearances, which monitors the implementation of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, which Iraq ratified in November 2010.
In recent reviews of Iraq, both the UN Committee against Torture and the Human Rights Committee expressed concern about cases of enforced disappearances in the country after the American occupation and urged the Iraqi authorities to take the necessary steps to end this systematic practice.
The UN Committee responsible for monitoring the implementation of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance regularly calls on the State party to cooperate in accordance with the established procedure.
In its parallel reports to these UN bodies, Alkarama highlighted the lack of cooperation by the Iraqi authorities with the Committee, which to date has several hundred urgent cases of missing persons pending.
At the same time, the lack of cooperation so far indicates a lack of political will on the part of the country's authorities to resolve this issue, prompting the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances to repeatedly urge the State party to cooperate in good faith with the procedure outlined in the Convention.
Syria
For decades under the rule of the Assad family, the regime in Syria has been one of the worst when it comes to abductions and enforced disappearances. This pattern of violations intensified after the Syrian revolution, where the regime used and continues to use all forms of repression and persecution against its people.
In this context, Alkarama has submitted many individual complaints to the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. According to some estimates, some 111,000 people are still missing or have been forcibly disappeared, most of them believed to be in the hands of the Syrian government.
Algeria
The families of thousands of victims of enforced disappearance in Algeria are still waiting for the return of their loved ones or for justice and clarification of their fate.
Alkarama has submitted more than a thousand cases to the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances and the UN Human Rights Committee, which have issued decisions confirming the responsibility of the Algerian authorities for these crimes. Thousands of Algerians were abducted by the Algerian police and army between 1992 and 1998, and their families still have no news of them.
Despite numerous recommendations by the Committee on these disappearances, the authorities continue to refuse to shed light on the circumstances of these crimes and to bring the perpetrators to justice, taking advantage of the provisions of the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, which largely grants impunity to those responsible and criminalises anyone who demands the right of the families of the disappeared to know the fate of their loved ones.
In its report on the human rights situation in Algeria during the Human Rights Council's periodic review on 11 November 2022, Al-Karama noted that the Algerian authorities regularly demonstrate bad faith and refrain from cooperating with UN treaty bodies and special procedures in the implementation of their final recommendations and individual decisions.
This lack of cooperation was also previously observed in the 31 December 2019 report on state party compliance with human rights treaty bodies, where Algeria's cooperation with treaty bodies was the lowest among UN member states.
UAE
The practice of enforced disappearance is widespread and common among Gulf governments, particularly in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. On 20 February 2023, the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances issued a general allegation concerning the pattern of enforced disappearances in the UAE, based on complaints from NGOs. In September 2022, the Working Group published another general allegation concerning the pattern of enforced disappearances in the UAE, consisting of 12 questions addressed to the UAE authorities, which have not yet responded. At the same time, the UAE authorities continue to prevent UN experts from conducting research in the country or visiting prisons and detention centres.
Earlier, on 12 July 2022, Alkarama participated in a briefing session for NGOs at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, in preparation for the first review of the UAE by the UN Committee against Torture during its 74th session, held from 13 to 14 July 2022. This was the first review of the State party since it ratified the Convention in 2012. Among other issues, Alkarama raised the prevalence of enforced disappearances by the state security apparatus, citing the case of Syrian national Amjad Mohammed Noor Al-Nasser.
In the latest report of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, presented to the Human Rights Council at its 57th session, from 9 September to 9 October 2024, the Working Group expressed grave concern at reports of continued persecution of persons involved in the 2011 protests calling for democratic reforms in the UAE, in particular with regard to new charges against 84 out of 133 persons charged in 2011 and allegations that several prisoners have disappeared while in detention after serving their sentences. In this regard, the Working Group also reported on the case of the international transfer of Khalaf Abdul Rahman Abdullah from Jordan, who was also reportedly part of the "UAE 94" trial.
The Working Group stressed that "accurate information about the detention of persons and the place or places of their detention, including their movement from one place to another, should be promptly made available to their families, lawyers, or any other person with a legitimate interest in obtaining this information, and failure to do so constitutes enforced disappearance."
Saudi Arabia
In the case of Saudi Arabia, the situation is even more bleak, given the large number of victims of repression, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance related to the exercise of the right to freedom of opinion and expression.
Despite statements by UN human rights bodies, enforced disappearances, particularly in the post-arrest phase, remain a systematic and widespread practice, including within the state security apparatus.
For example, on 15 May 2024, in response to a complaint submitted by Alkarama, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities found that the prolonged solitary confinement without trial of Saudi religious scholar and critic Safar bin Abdulrahman Al-Hawali and the failure to provide him with the necessary accommodations for his disability constituted serious violations, including arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance and torture or ill-treatment.
The Committee noted that Mr Al-Hawali's family did not know his whereabouts for more than two months until the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances requested information from the authorities, who later stated that he was being investigated under the Counter-Terrorism and Financing of Terrorism Act, which does not comply with the country's obligations under international human rights law.
The issue of enforced disappearance also featured prominently during the interactive dialogue session in the context of the Universal Periodic Review of Saudi Arabia at the Human Rights Council on 4 July 2024, during the 56th session of the Human Rights Council, held from 18 June to 4 October 2024.
The intervention by the delegation of the ALQST Organisation for Human Rights, which focuses on Saudi Arabia, referred to recommendations regarding the State's accession to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. It also raised the issue of prisoners of conscience and detained activists, including lawyer Mohammed Al-Qahtani and others. The delegation criticised Saudi Arabia's failure to implement previous recommendations to guarantee freedom of expression and its refusal to accede to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Alkarama also addressed the issue of enforced disappearances in its parallel report to the Human Rights Council during this session of the Universal Periodic Review, providing evidence on the matter.
Libya
On 12 December 2023, Alkarama submitted the urgent case of Mr. Al-Mahdi Al-Barghathi, former Minister of Defence in the Government of National Accord, and his companions to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. They all disappeared on 6 October 2023 after being abducted by members of the "Tariq bin Ziyad Brigade", a militia led by Saddam Haftar, son of Khalifa Haftar, in the Al-Salmani East neighbourhood of Benghazi (eastern Libya).
Later, the military prosecutor in Benghazi reported Al-Barghathi's death, prompting Alkarama to submit an urgent appeal to the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions on 27 December.
Cases of enforced disappearance in Libya appear to be a worrying and widespread phenomenon across the country, with human rights sources reporting 251 cases from the beginning of 2020 to July 2023.
Sudan
Enforced disappearances are a common practice in Sudan amidst the ongoing armed conflict, along with other horrific violations.
For example, in early June 2023, Alkarama made an urgent appeal to the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances regarding Dr Mohamed Ali Abdullah Al-Jazouli, who was abducted by the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces and taken to an unknown location, where he was forced to give a video confession.
In a speech to the UN Human Rights Council on 12 September, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, stated that at least 500 people had been reported missing in Khartoum alone since the outbreak of fighting.
Yemen
In Yemen, which has been suffering from armed conflict for almost ten years, crimes of enforced disappearance appear to have been a common practice even before the conflict began. Many parties are involved in committing such violations, and Alkarama has documented numerous cases and submitted complaints to the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.
There are currently no definitive statistics on the number of people who have been forcibly disappeared in the prisons of Yemen's warring parties over the past decade, as this is complicated by various factors, including the remoteness of Yemen's regions, the lack of reporting and the absence of official bodies responsible for monitoring and documentation.
Yemeni human rights organisations have attempted to provide an approximate figure for the number of enforced disappearances reported to them and have counted 270 cases.
Double Standards
Alkarama's director, lawyer Rachid Mesli, explains: "Some countries have not ratified the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance in order to keep their hands free to commit this terrible type of violation, such as Algeria, about which Alkarama has submitted more than 1,000 cases. This led the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances to request a visit to the country almost twenty years ago, to no avail".
Lawyer Mesli asked: "How effective is this UN mechanism in carrying out such visits, and why did it remain silent after the failure to carry out the visit, when the group could have taken a public stance condemning these practices as a minimum measure to give some comfort to the victims and acknowledge their suffering?"
Mesli continued: "Alkarama understands the limited capacities of UN human rights mechanisms and, given its experience and expertise in working with these mechanisms, the challenges they face. It also recognises that the effectiveness of UN human rights procedures is closely linked to international political will, which often recedes when interests dictate. In contrast, we see a scene dominated by double standards, whether in government policy, Western media or international human rights organisations".
However, he added: "This does not mean surrendering to this failure and refraining from pursuing serious reforms and creating momentum that will have a real impact on human rights worldwide".
Mesli also mentioned: "Even with regard to Iraq, for example, Alkarama recalls the positions of Western governments that actively opposed enforced disappearances during the era of former President Saddam Hussein, while currently they remain silent despite the doubling of the number of victims and the continued disregard by successive Iraqi governments for the demands of the International Committee on Enforced Disappearances."
On this occasion, lawyer Rachid Mesli recalled "the broad international movement against enforced disappearances in Latin America, particularly in Chile and Argentina in the 1970s, especially the pressure exerted by left-wing parties in Europe. Meanwhile, today, hundreds of thousands of Muslim minorities or Arab populations around the world suffer from enforced disappearances, without any human rights movement or international stance on the matter".
Finally, Alkarama reiterates its deep regret at the loss of credibility of the UN procedures on human rights issues in general and on enforced disappearances in particular. This sentiment has been echoed by voices criticising the UN's positions on key human rights issues in recent years, culminating in the catastrophic failure to curb the genocidal crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza before the eyes of the world.