The missing persons of Iraq.
“Iraq has the most disappeared persons in the world”
Forced disappearances and missing persons.
A forced disappearance (or enforced disappearance) is defined in Article 2 of the Convention for the
Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, adopted by the United Nations General
Assembly On 20 December 2006, 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 place such a person
outside the protection of the law. Often forced disappearance implies murder. The victim in such a
case is first abducted, then illegally detained, and often tortured; the victim is then killed, and the
body is then hidden. Typically, a murder will be surreptitious, with the corpse disposed of in such a
way as to prevent it ever being found, so that the person apparently vanishes. The party committing
the murder has deniability, as there is no body to prove that the victim has actually died.1
Article 1 of the Convention further states that No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a
state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be
invoked as a justification for enforced disappearance.2 Neither Iraq, nor the USA have signed or
ratified this convention.3 The United States refused to sign, saying that the text “did not meet our
expectations“, without giving an explanation.4 Once again the United States placed itself outside the
provisions of International Humanitarian law.a
According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which came into force on 1 July
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, and thus is not subject to
a statute of limitations.5
The Human Rights Council Advisory Committee on 3 August 2010 took up, on requests of the Human
1 http://wapedia.mobi/en/Forced_disappearances
3 http://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=IV-16&chapter=4&lang=en
4 http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2007/02/200852513385877874.html
5 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Forced-Disappearance-International-Criminal-limitations/dp/6130247583