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 Editorials | February 2007 
Human Rights
 Le Monde
Armed men, perhaps in uniform, perhaps not, burst into a home and take someone away by force - someone who could be a political opponent or a defender of human rights. They take him to a secret detention center, where, most often, he is tortured. His family and friends desperately seek news from the authorities. Those authorities pretend to know nothing, take no interest, or proceed to limply open an investigation that will never get anywhere. A man or a woman has disappeared. And if one day that person is rediscovered, perhaps it will have been by way of a ransom, or perhaps after an interminable detention, or perhaps only a body - possibly mutilated - will be found, in a mass grave or by the side of a road.
This scenario is one the inhabitants of Chechnya, Nepal, Colombia and Iraq experience daily. For the first time, an instrument of international law, the Convention for the Protection of All People against Forced Disappearance, adopted by the UN on December 20, 2006, furnishes the victims of these crimes and their defenders with an important panoply of rights to fight against oblivion, obtain justice, and demand reparations.
Since the late 1970s and the era of South American dictatorships, France has been in the forefront to mobilize the international community on this issue. Argentina joined France to grandfather this text at the UN. The opening ceremony for the signing of the Convention is taking place in Paris on Tuesday, February 6, in the presence of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour. On this occasion, Jacques Chirac should salute "an important advance in international law" and "countries' desire to be rid of an odious practice, based on terror, lies and oblivion."
However, to come into effect, the treaty must be ratified by twenty member states. We must hope that this happens as soon as possible. The text was adopted unanimously by the UN General Assembly, but many countries were reluctant. If they finally said yes, it was undoubtedly in the hope of subsequently limiting the text's consequences. Russia, Algeria and Colombia - states where the forces of order are accused of being implicated in numerous crimes and forced disappearances - figure among this latter group.
The convention indirectly poses the question of the CIA's American "secret prisons," a practice employed by the Bush administration in its anti-terrorist fight. Some prisons were located in Europe, which brings into question the responsibility of the governments involved. The big democratic countries would therefore be well-advised to provide an example before giving the rest of the planet lessons. |
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