COMMITTEE ON ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCES CONCLUDES NINTH SESSION

The Committee on Enforced Disappearances closed its ninth session this afternoon after adopting its concluding observations and recommendations on the reports of Iraq and Montenegro on their implementation of the provisions of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.

The concluding observations and recommendations for Iraq and Montenegro are available on the Committee’s webpage for this session, where the session report, statements and other documents related to the ninth session can also be found.

In the course of its ninth session, the Committee reviewed the reports of Iraq (CED/C/IRQ/1) and Montenegro (CED/C/MNE/1), and also met with States and civil society on matters related to the implementation of the Convention. The Committee met with representatives of Honduran families of disappeared migrants, who called upon the Committee to consider how the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance could be used in the protection of migrants and asylum seekers.

At a public meeting to close the session, Committee Rapporteur Juan José López Ortega presented highlights of the session in his report. The Committee then adopted its session report and the agenda for the tenth session.

Committee Chairperson Emmanuel Decaux said in concluding remarks that this year, the Convention had reached a critical point, with the number of States parties reaching 50, with recent ratifications by Belize, Ukraine and Greece. During the ninth session the Committee held a constructive dialogue with Iraq and Montenegro, adopted the list of issues which would serve to lead the dialogue with Burkina Faso, Kazakhstan and Tunisia at the tenth session, and examined a report on the implementation of its concluding observations and recommendations made to Germany, Argentina and Spain last year. The Committee looked into the procedure of urgent appeals, and Mr. Decaux noted that by September 2015, a total of 128 individual communications had been accepted, thus doubling the number of cases accepted in the intersessional period. This meant that the procedure was better known, and required of the Committee a greater diligence in processing of those applications and saving lives by locating and freeing a missing person in the shortest delay possible.

During the session, the Committee held its annual meeting with the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, which was an opportunity to take stock of the activities of the two parallel organs which must be complementary and must reinforce each other. Further, the Committee examined the Guiding Principles against Intimidation and Reprisals, adopted during the twenty-seventh Annual Meeting of Chairperson of Human Rights Treaty Bodies in June 2015 in Costa Rica. Those Guidelines were a starting point of an effective protection system, stressed Mr. Decaux. Noting that, pursuant to Article 27 of the Convention, a Conference of Parties should take place between 23 December 2014, date of entry into force of the Convention, and 23 December 2016, which should evaluate the working of the Committee and decide whether it was appropriate to entrust the monitoring of the Convention to another body, the Chairperson said that the Convention was the result of more than 40 years of waiting and hopes, and a victory for the families of the disappeared. With this goal achieved, it would make no sense to experiment with a new system, lose all the gains made in the last four years and make a leap into the unknown. In closing, Mr. Decaux recalled that the meeting with Estela de Carlotto, the President of Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, was a very emotional moment which would remain engraved in memory and hearts, which would continue to remind the Committee of the power of hope and solidarity in the face of individual and collective tragedy of enforced disappearances. It was another reason to redouble the efforts to make the Convention a universal tool which fully played its role of prevention and early warning, and the protection of all persons from enforced disappearances.

The tenth session of the Committee will be held in Geneva from 7 to 18 March 2016, during which the reports of Burkina Faso, Kazakhstan and Tunisia will be considered.


For use of the information media; not an official record

CED15/013E