PRESS BRIEFING BY MEMBERS OF WORKING GROUP ON INVOLUNTARY DISAPPEARANCES

Press Briefing

PRESS BRIEFING BY MEMBERS OF WORKING GROUP ON INVOLUNTARY DISAPPEARANCES

Despite encouraging signs, it was premature to conclude that a positive trend was emerging in the number and resolution of cases of government-related disappearances, the Chairman of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances told correspondents at a Headquarters press conference today.

Speaking as the Working Group completed its first session of the year, from 13 to 17 July, Ivan Tosevski (The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), said that more than 45,000 cases in more than 70 countries remained on the list. However, nearly 50 cases were clarified during the session just concluded as a result of replies and communications with governments, sources, and families.

[The Working Group meets three times a year and is composed of five experts. Established in 1980, it was the first mechanism set up within the framework of the United Nations Human Rights Commission to deal with specific violations of human rights of a particularly serious nature, in an issue- oriented manner. It assists the relatives of disappeared persons in ascertaining their fate and whereabouts and acts as a channel of communication between the families and the concerned governments. It also monitors the compliance of States with their obligation under the 18 December 1992 Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances, which affirmed that any act of enforced disappearance was an offence to human dignity.]

Mr. Tosevski was joined by three other experts of the Working Group, as follows: Diego Garcia-Sayan of Peru, Agha Hilaly of Pakistan, and Jonas Foli of Ghana.

Mr. Tosevski said that during the current session some 200 cases were reviewed by the Working Group and transmitted to various governments. The Group considered 108 urgent actions or appeals, which were cases sent to governments in the few months prior to the convening of the session. The number of clarifications indicated a good level of cooperation between the Working Group and various governments.

Moreover, the Working Group had received some information from governments indicating the prospect of clarification of an additional number of cases, he said. For example, it had received a report from the Government of Sri Lanka describing the special commission it had established a couple of years ago to deal with that country's more than 10,000 disappearances. The creation of a special commission augured well for an increase in clarifications.

In another positive development, he said, a number of governments had undertaken measures to compensate victims of disappearances, or their relatives. The Working Group, in its report (document E/CN.4/1998/43), had insisted that governments should pursue that avenue of resolution.

Tosevski's Briefing - 2 - 17 July 1998

Mr. Garcia-Sayan, expert from Peru, agreed that although the act of compensation did not resolve cases, it was a very important response by governments. That positive step had been undertaken in Latin America. In Argentina, where more than 5,000 applications had been presented, more than 1,200 had received favourable decisions. While the Working Group would encourage compensation, it understood that the importance of punishing the perpetrators and rehabilitating the families of victims was undiminished.

An increased awareness in many countries of the need to react expeditiously to transmissions by the Working Group was another positive development, he said. The specialized bodies designed by governments to receive cases and transmit their responses had evolved into a cooperative relationship between the two. The transmissions were increasingly useful to the government investigators, who now offered more than just diplomatic responses to cases. The Working Group, in turn, was eager to reply to specific requests for information. In a recent example, the human rights ambassador in Geneva provided a judge in Argentina with information concerning more than 200 pregnant women who had disappeared during the 1970s.

Asked about the effect of limited resources on the Working Group's mandate, Mr. Tosevski said that the conditions in which the expert group operated were not ideal. Yet, during the session, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, had visited the Working Group and discussed such matters. In response to the members' description of their unsatisfactory working conditions, she would try to improve their staff and budgetary arrangements.

Replying to a question concerning clarification of the number of cases heard in the session just concluded, and the meaning of "urgent action" cases, Mr. Tosevski said that 108 cases were transmitted as urgent actions, meaning that the Working Group had received recent information about those cases, and could, therefore, communicate with the respective governments immediately and directly in an effort to avoid any delays in its efforts to save human lives. That kind of intervention or communication was known as "urgent action". Allegations or cases of disappearance received earlier would not qualify as urgent, although those would be considered by the Working Group.

He said that in the current session the experts considered 98 cases that had been received between December and July, although not all the situations had necessarily arisen during that period. It had reviewed 108 urgent action cases, and 98 ordinary cases, bringing to 206 the total number of cases.

To a follow-up question about what constituted clarification of a case, Mr. Tosevski said that clarification was a determination of whether a person was dead or alive. Following communication with governments and the ensuing investigation, the Working Group informed a family about the information it had received. In order to clarify a case, the family had to confirm that information to its government. If it was satisfied that the findings were correct, the case was clarified by the Working Group. If the family was not satisfied, the case

Tosevski's Briefing - 3 - 17 July 1998

was not clarified, and the Working Group sought further details from the government concerning the circumstances of its conclusions. The Working Group was really "in the hands of the families", since all clarifications depended on their confirmations.

Asked what the Working Group had done in Iraq, Mr. Tosevski replied, "almost nothing".

In response to a question concerning the Working Group's mandate, Mr. Tosevski reiterated that the experts dealt only with disappearances resulting from government actions, and not from the actions of organizations, such as rebel or terrorist groups. Thus, from the perspective of the United Nations, only victims of government agencies such as police or military were addressed.

Another correspondent noted that the Working Group was merely a communicator between the family and government and played a kind of "mailman's role" in the process, and asked what it did about cases of apparent kidnapping or disappearance by other groups.

Mr. Tosevski said that, in principle, as far as the Working Group was concerned, the responsible agency was the government, and it was up to the government to determine whether its agencies were responsible. It was a complicated process to sort out information from government and non-governmental sources, because the line was sometimes unclear.

In a follow-up question, the correspondent asked whether the Working Group had followed up the disappearance of American tourists in Kashmir. Mr. Tosevski reiterated that the basis of its efforts in determining culpability in kidnapping and abduction cases only referred to involvement with government action and not with so-called voluntary disappearances or disappearance due to private clashes, misunderstandings or revenge.

Another correspondent asked about the significance of indicators of a downward trend in disappearances, especially given the experts' limited awareness of the scope of the problem worldwide. She also asked why there were very few cases in sub-Saharan Africa as compared to Latin America.

Mr. Hilaly said he did not pretend the Working Group had a composite photograph of the situation. It relied only on information received from countries that were organized and informed. In many parts of the world, however, disappearances may be occurring at a much higher rate than what appeared in the file, owing to fewer non-governmental sources, and so forth. Thus, the humanitarian efforts of the Working Group could not pretend to replace monitoring on the field by other United Nations agencies.

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