In June 2011, during a visit by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
at the Center for the Promotion of Human Rights, in Buenos Aires,
Argentina, a woman shared her testimony about her son, one of
the victims known as “desaparecidos” (disappeared) of the
military government that ruled Argentina through the late 1970’s
and early 1980’s. The Center was formerly the notorious
government detention centre Escuela Superior de Mecánica
de la Armada. (UN Photo/Evan Schneider).
Enforced disappearance has frequently been used as a strategy to spread terror within the society. The feeling of insecurity generated by this practice is not limited to the close relatives of the disappeared, but also affects their communities and society as a whole. Enforced disappearance has become a global problem and is not restricted to a specific region of the world.
On 21 December 2010, by its resolution 65/209 the UN General Assembly expressed its deep concern, in particular, by the increase in enforced or involuntary disappearances in various regions of the world, including arrest, detention and abduction, when these are part of or amount to enforced disappearances, and by the growing number of reports concerning harassment, ill-treatment and intimidation of witnesses of disappearances or relatives of persons who have disappeared.
By the same resolution the Assembly welcomed the adoption of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, and decided to declare 30 August the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, to be observed beginning in 2011.