U.S. Opts Out of U.N.-Backed Disappearance Convention

Ministers and other top officials from more than 60 countries signed a new international treaty on Tuesday, February 6, that bans forced disappearances.^[1] The treaty also prohibits governments from holding people in secret detention.^[2] The United States, which has been accused of sending terrorist suspects to secret prisons overseas, did not sign the convention because President George W. Bush's administration opposed an early draft of the treaty, which bars governments from holding people in secret detention.^[3]

The U.S. was not alone however, many other Western nations, including Germany, Spain, Britain and Italy, did not sign the treaty.^[4] The measure was introduced in November by France at the U.N. General Assembly and it was adopted in December.^[5]

The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances contains an absolute prohibition on forced disappearances and calls on all parties involved to ensure that it is an offense under their domestic laws.^[6] Significantly, it defines any widespread or systematic practice of enforced disappearances as a crime against humanity.^[7]

The French Foreign Ministry, which hosted the signing in Paris, asserted that around 41,000 people have been “disappeared” by their governments since 1980.^[8] Latin American countries, for decades a hotbed of such disappearances, are now owning up to much of the violence that left hundreds of thousands dead or disappeared during wars of the 1970s and 1980s.^[9] Such disappearances were also a regular part of the Nazi reign over Germany in the 1930’s and 40’s.

The convention defines forced disappearances as the arrest, detention, kidnapping or ''any other form of deprivation of freedom'' by state agents or affiliates, followed by denials or cover-ups about the detention and location of the person gone missing.^[10] Nations that go on to ratify the text would ensure victims' rights, and require states to penalize any forced disappearances in their countries and enact preventive and monitoring measures.^[11] The treaty will have the force of law once 20 countries have ratified it, which is a separate step after the signature stage.^[12]

---

^[1] Jamey Keaten, U.S. Doesn't Sign Ban on Disappearances, AP (via SeattlePI.com), February 6, 2007.
^[2] Id.
^[3] Id.
^[4] Id.
^[5] Id.
^[6] UN-Approved Global Pact to Outlaw Enforced Disappearances Opens for Signature, UN News Center, February 6, 2007 (UN Pact).
^[7] Id.
^[8] Keaten, supra note 1.
^[9] Id.
^[10] The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances art. 2, Feb. 6, 2007, http://untreaty.un.org/English/notpubl/IV_16_english.pdf.
^[11] Keaten, supra note 1.
^[12] UN Pact, supra note 6.