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In the last 35 years, tens of thousands of individuals have been forcibly “disappeared” through conflict or repression in more than 80 countries around the world. The right of families to know the fate of their missing loved ones was first internationally recognized by the UN Human Rights Committee in 1983 with respect to Uruguay, and judicially recognized by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in a Honduran case of enforced disappearance in 1988. Since then, government responses to the violation have evolved to encompass truth seeking, exhumations, trials, reparations and reform measures.
These measures have focused on the disappeared, 70-94% of whom are men. However, the 2006 International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance defines victims of the crime as both the disappeared and those who have suffered harm as the direct result of an enforced disappearance. This has important implications for women, who comprise the majority of those left behind to pick up the pieces after a disappearance, haunted by the hope that their loved one is still alive.
