The International Crime of Enforced Disappearance:
Prevention, Accountability and Remedies

Peacemakers Trust directors and associates working on prevention of enforced disappearances:
Catherine Morris   |   Rebekah Smith

Research, writing and UN submissions, 2023-2024

Project Summary

In 2023, Peacemakers Trust began a series of publications and submissions to the United Nations (UN) concerning the international crime of enforced disappearances, which affect hundreds of thousands of people in at least 85 countries. Peacemakers Trust is advocating that all countries join the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED, or Convention on Enforced Disappearance):

• Canada: Accede to and implement the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance: Oral video statement to the UN Human Rights Council (with Lawyers' Rights Watch Canada) delivered on 25 March 2024. Drafted by Catherine Morris and read by Rebekah Smith. See the oral video statement.
  
• The global problem of enforced disappearances: "Outside all protection of the law": Statement to the UN Human Rights Council, with Lawyers' Rights Watch Canada, published by the UN Human Rights Council on 23 January 2024. See the statement. See the statement on the UN website. See the Annex: Enforced disappearances in 17 countries.
  
• Global impunity for enforced disappearances: Call for universal ratification of the Convention for the Protection of all Persons against Enforced Disappearances. Oral statement to the UN Human Rights Council seeking univeral ratification of othe UN Convention on Enforced Disappearances, with Lawyers' Rights Watch Canada, the International Bar Association's Human Rights Institute, the Law Society of England and Wales and others, 19 September 2023.
  
• "Unforgotten on the Day of the Disappeared," Slaw: Canada's Online Legal Magazine, 30 August 2023.
  
• Short-term enforced disappearances: "Every Minute Counts": Contribution to project of joint statement on the notion of short-term enforced disappearance by the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances and the Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances, with Lawyers' Rights Watch Canada, 15 August 2023. See full .pdf submission.
  
• "Indigenous Peoples and enforced disappearances in Canada: Submission to the UN Human Rights Council for Canada's fourth Universal Periodic Review scheduled for November 2023. See a summary and link to the submission.
  
• "The Disappeared: Indigenous Peoples and the international crime of enforced disappearances," by Catherine Morris and Rebekah Smith, in Slaw: Canada's Online Legal Magazine, 20 March 2023, available online.