The UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, which is pressing governments to provide information, still has nearly 43,000 open cases from 84 countries, with more than one-third of them from Iraq. Algeria is also on the UN list with 3,005 cases. Then there is Syria. More than two years into the revolution, Syrian human rights monitors say the number of those who have disappeared without a trace is now in the thousands. While the figures vary greatly, the pattern is basically the same: Intelligence agents seize people from homes, offices and checkpoints, and human rights activists say the targets often are peaceful regime opponents, including defense lawyers, doctors and aid workers. In such enforced disappearances, governments refuse to acknowledge detentions or provide information about those taken. The point traditionally is to get rid of opponents and scare the rest of the population into submission — in Syria's case, to kill off the revolution. That three Arab countries are on the UN list of forced disappearances is not what was hoped for. In international human rights law, forced disappearance often implies murder. The victim in such a case is abducted, illegally detained and often tortured during interrogation, and then killed with the body hidden so that the person apparently vanishes. The party committing the murder denies ever doing so, and nobody provides evidence of the victim's death. Not only do disappearances silence opponents and critics but they also create uncertainty and fear in the wider community, silencing others who would oppose and criticize. Disappearances entail the violation of many fundamental human rights, including the right to liberty; the right to personal security and humane treatment (including freedom from torture); the right to a fair trial, to legal counsel and to equal protection under the law; and the right of presumption of innocence. The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2006, also states that the widespread or systematic practice of enforced disappearances constitutes a crime against humanity. Very often, people who have disappeared are never released and their fate remains unknown. But the person has not just vanished. Someone, somewhere, knows what has happened to them. Someone is responsible. Enforced disappearance is a crime under international law but all too often the perpetrators are never brought to justice. Family members, who often spend the rest of their lives searching for information about the disappeared, are also victims. Families and friends, not knowing the fate of their loved one, wait, sometimes for years, for news that may never come. Their anguish is often exacerbated by material deprivation if the missing person is the mainstay of the family's finances. As the UN Working Group released its findings, former Argentine military leader Jorge Rafael Videla died. Videla was the most prominent figure of the years of the junta, one of the darkest episodes of Argentine history in which he presided over one of the region's cruelest repressions in modern times. Up to 30,000 people were tortured and killed during this period, in a campaign known as the "Dirty War" because among other atrocities, pregnant prisoners would be held until they gave birth, then killed and illegal adoptions of their babies would be arranged, usually by military or police families. Unlike some other military rulers of the region, Videla died in prison, serving a life sentence for his crimes against humanity. If the world is to free itself of dictatorships which snatch people from their homes, other despots must be brought to justice.
