WUNRN

http://www.wunrn.com

 

 

 

UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Disappearances/Pages/DisappearancesIndex.aspx

 

The Working Group was established by the UN Commission on Human Rights in 1980 to assist families in determining the fate and whereabouts of disappeared relatives. It endeavours to establish a channel of communication between the families and the Governments concerned, to ensure that individual cases are investigated, with the objective of clarifying the whereabouts of persons who, having disappeared, are placed outside the protection of the law. In view of its humanitarian mandate, clarification occurs when the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person are clearly established. The Working Group continues to address cases of disappearances until they are resolved. It also provides assistance in the implementation by States of the UN Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.

 

UN Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances to Visit Argentina – Important to Mothers & Grandmothers of the “Disappeared”

GENEVA / BUENOS AIRES (26 February 2015) – The United Nations Working Group* on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances will meet in Buenos Aires, Argentina, from 2 to 6 March 2015, to mark the 35th anniversary of its creation as a response to the disappearances committed by the dictatorship.

The Group will hold its 105th session at the former site of one of the largest clandestine detention and torture centers that operated in the country at the time, the Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA), which currently houses the Remembrance and Human Rights Centre of the National Archive of Memory.

“The creation of our body is strictly related to enforced disappearances which took place in the country during the dictatorship,” said the experts of the Working Group. “This triggered the international community to establish the Working Group, the first UN independent monitoring mechanism with the mandated to address a specific human rights issue.”

The 35th anniversary of the Working Group’s creation will be commemorated with a public event held at the Salon Libertador of Palacio San Martin, premises of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Monday, 2 March, at 18:15. “We are very grateful to the Government of Argentina for inviting the Working Group in this very symbolic opportunity,” the experts noted.

During its session, the five-strong group of experts will examine over 700 cases from 41 countries. It will also meet relatives of those who have disappeared, civil society representatives and different State authorities, to exchange information on individual cases as well as to discuss thematic issues related to enforced disappearances.

The Working Group will, in addition, examine allegations received regarding obstacles encountered in the implementation of the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance……

 

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http://www.abuelas.org.ar/english/history.htm

 

Argentina – Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo – Grandmothers (& Mothers) of the “Disappeared”

The drama of children who disappeared in our country, the Argentine Republic, is one of the consequences of the National Reorganization Process enforced by the military dictatorship, which ruled the country between 1976 and 1983.

These children are the children of our children, who have also disappeared. Many babies were kidnapped with their parents, some after their parents were killed, and others were born in clandestine detention centers where their mothers were taken after having been sequestered at different states of their pregnancies.

 

http://www.abuelas.org.ar/imagenes/abuelas3.jpghttp://www.abuelas.org.ar/imagenes/abuelas2.jpg

We, the babies' grandmothers, tried desperately to locate them and, during these searches, decided to unite. Thus, in 1977, the non-governmental organization called Abuelas (Grandmothers) de Plaza de Mayo was established, dedicated specifically to fighting for the return of our grandchildren. We also relentlessly investigated our children's and grandchildren's disappearances, in hopes of finding them.

As mothers our search is two-fold because we are demanding the restitution of our grandchildren while simultaneously searching for these children's parents, our sons and daughters.

From the moment that our children (often with our grandchildren in their wombs) disappeared, we visited every court, office, orphanage, day care center, and so on, to locate them. We appeared before the courts, the successive military governments, the Supreme Court, and the ecclesiastical hierarchies, never obtaining a positive result. We finally directed our claim to international organizations such as the United Nations and the Organization of American States, again to no avail.

In 1977 we began our struggle with the claim for 13 children's restitutions. As of August 2004, over 400 children have been recorded as missing. However, we know that there are approximately 500 kidnapped children. In many cases, their relatives did not declare such kidnappings, either due to ignorance of the ability to do so or because they did not know that the mothers were pregnant at the time of their disappearance.

The disappeared children were deprived of their identity, their religion, and their right to live with their family, in order words, all of the rights that are nationally and internationally recognized as their universal human rights.

Our demand is concrete: that the children who were kidnapped as a method of political repression be restored to their legitimate families.

 

Procedures for the Search of Our Grandchildren

Since 1976, we have pursued:

a.               Investigations at local and federal courts, including cases of granted adoptions and also with regard to NN children (names unknown) who may have been recorded at those courts.

b.               Investigations of all births registered in governmental offices after the conclusion of the normal legal term for such registration.

c.               Beginning in 1997, we began informational campaigns to draw young people (of an approximate age range of our grandchildren) that may have doubts regarding their true identity to Abuelas. We have had very positive results.

We continually publish announcements in local newspapers read by individuals who are aware of information relating to the kidnappings but who keep silent either due to complicity or fear. In addition, we distribute posters and leaflets with photographs and details of the disappearance of children.

When reports are made, all information is filed into folders containing individual accusations of each case, details of the disappearance, photographs of the child and/or his/her parents, identification documents, and habeas corpus that have been filed, among other information. Each person who makes the denouncement signs all these documents. A certificate of the mother's pregnancy is included, in a case where the detainee was pregnant, or a birth certificate of the child, in the event that the child was kidnapped after birth.

In our discourse, we make it clear that our grandchildren have not been abandoned; they have the right to recover their roots and their history; they have relatives who are constantly engaged in searching for them.

In the 30 years, we have been able to located 87 of the disappeared children, including 4 found by governmental commissions and 2 located by CLAMOR, the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in the Southern Cone.

Some of the children are already living with their legitimate families and have become perfectly integrated. Others are still living with the families that have raised them, but are in close contact with their true grandmothers and relatives. By being a part of two families, the children have recovered their identity.

There is a large number of disappeared children whose identities were completely annulled. In those cases, we use modern science to prove that they are members of a particular family. For this purpose, we rely on support from the scientific community in the field of genetics, hematology, morphology, and others.

Through our participation and effort in the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, we were able to push for the inclusion of articles 7, 8 and 11, which refer to the right to an identity and are known as the "Argentine clauses." This International Convention was later incorporated into the Argentine Constitution, via law number 23,849.

In 1992, as a direct result of a petition we organized, the National Executive Power of our government created CONADI, the National Committee for the Right to Identity. The main objective of this organization is to assist young adults who doubt their identities by investigating all existing documents and referring them for blood analysis. Blood analyses are conducted by the National Bank of Genetic Data, which has the power to perform such analyses without legal intervention