Enforced disappearance

An enforced disappearance (or forced disappearance) is the secret abduction or imprisonment of a person with the support or acquiescence of a state, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the person's fate or whereabouts with the intent of placing the victim outside the protection of the law. 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.

Enforced disappearance was first recognized as a human rights issue in the 1970s as a result of its use by military dictatorships in Latin America during the Dirty War. However, it occurred prior to that time and has occurred all over the world.

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, enforced disappearance qualifies as a crime against humanity, not subject to a statute of limitations, in international criminal law. On 20 December 2006, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.

Human rights law

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 constitutes war crimes.