ICIP actively supported the celebration of the World Congress on Enforced Disappearances, which took place in Geneva (Switzerland) from 15 to 16 January. The Convention against Enforced Disappearances Initiative (CEDI) and the United Nations organised this event. An ICIP delegation actively participated in the event, which brought together civil society organisations, including family associations, states, international agencies, and experts, to agree on a common strategy and action plan to promote the ratification and implementation of the Convention against Enforced Disappearances and facilitate intergovernmental dialogue.
The Congress received the support of ICIP and many international institutions, which promoted a vision of peace in the fight against disappearances. ICIP’s analysis is based on the institute’s “Enforced Disappearances” program, which aims to delve deeper into conceptualising the link between the struggle against enforced disappearances and peacebuilding.
Specifically, ICIP’s work in this area focuses on the accompaniment and support provided to groups of relatives of disappeared persons; this implies incorporating a gender perspective since, in most cases, these groups are headed by women who lead the research efforts.
At the Congress’s opening ceremony, ICIP director Kristian Herbolzheimer noted that “people who search for missing relatives, with their demand for truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-repetition, are also promoters and guarantors of peace and democracy.” He added that ICIP is committed to “continuing to accompany searchers, especially women, and to disseminate their recognition as peacebuilders.“
ICIP also participated in the Congress’s closing session. In this case, the head of Strategic Alliances, Sílvia Plana, highlighted the need to “build networks and connection spaces between groups of searchers” and stressed the need to “mobilise states and civil society” to strengthen the fight against enforced disappearances and adopt a gender perspective. “We have much to learn from women searchers,” she said.
The voice of women searching for missing persons was also heard at the Congress, at the roundtable “The impact of enforced disappearances on women,” organised by ICIP and moderated by technician Sabina Puig. The session featured women from Syria, Gambia, the Philippines, Mexico and Peru who, from their own different experiences, highlighted the impunity that prevails regarding the crime of enforced disappearance and the painful process of demanding justice and obtaining the truth.
Related publications
ICIP’s work in accompanying women searchers began at the International Meeting of Relatives of Disappeared Persons, which took place in Barcelona in November 2023 and brought together some twenty women who are victims or direct relatives of disappeared persons.
The experiences of that first meeting have been compiled in the ICIP Report Conversations with Women Searchers: The Struggle against Enforced Disappearances and Peacebuilding by Baketik researcher Maider Maraña (in Spanish).
ICIP’s analysis of the link between the struggle against disappearances and peacebuilding was featured in the concept note Contributions of women searchers to peacebuilding by Sílvia Plana and Sabina Puig, presented at the Geneva Congress.
