- Category: Statements
Joint Statement:
- Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD)
- Families of Victims of Involuntary Disappearance (FIND)
- International Coalition Against Enforced Disappearances (ICAED)
Women everywhere are deeply affected by the global scourge of enforced disappearance. They are the wives, mothers, grandmothers, sisters, and daughters who are in the abysmal state of uncertainty and in perpetual search for their disappeared loved ones. They are often left behind to bear the socio-economic and psycho-emotional brunt of enforced disappearance. In cases when women are made to disappear, theyare particularly at great risk of sexual and other forms of violence.
- Category: Statements
Joint Statement:
- Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD)
- Families of Victims of Involuntary Disappearance (FIND)
- International Coalition Against Enforced Disappearances (ICAED)
Enforced disappearance is a continuing menace to human rights and civil liberties. The victims are not only denied due process of law but are also forced to endure unimaginable indignities.
Commission of enforced disappearance, by its clandestine nature, makes it extremely difficult to prove, even as investigators most often end up facing a blank wall. The direct or indirect involvement of security and law enforcement authorities make efforts to prevent this abominable offense, and to prosecute and put behind bars its perpetrators even more arduous. The deliberate scheme to conceal the fate and whereabouts of the disappeared renders the families’ search efforts often futile.
- Category: Statements
The Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD) calls on the Bhattarai government to uphold the rights of its citizens to free expression and peaceful assembly.
The recent arrest of 23 other human rights defenders including AFAD’s Executive Council Member, Mandira Sharma and a mother with her three-year-old daughter on February 16, 2013 is a clear violation of Nepal’s commitment to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). It is also a violation of the 1992 United Nations Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance which was unanimously adopted by all UN members on 18 December 1992.
- Category: Statements
In Solidarity with the One Billion Rising Global Call to Stop Violence Against Women
The women victims and families of victims of enforced disappearances join the global call to STOP VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN.
Violence against women is pervasive. The increasing incidence of rape, domestic violence, discrimination and other forms of violence among women in both peace and war times must be stopped.
- Category: Statements
The Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD) condemns the arrest and brief detention on 25 January 2013 of the thirty-two human rights activists by the Nepali Metropolitan police for participating in sit-in protests outside the prime ministerial residence in Nepal.
Dubbed as‘Occupy Baluwatar’ (Baluwatar Satyagraha), the sit-in protest is being staged by citizens of Nepal from various professions, as a response to the government’s inability to curb abuses and violence against women and punish those responsible especially for the most serious cases of brutality on women. AFAD extends solidarity to Occupy Baluwatar protest for their demands for justice and rule of law.
- Category: Statements
The Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD) strongly condemns the disappearance of human rights defender and Ramon Magsaysay Awardee Mr. Sombath Somphone.
The incident occurred on 15 December 2012. Mr. Sombath was driving in Thadeu Road in Vientiane where his vehicle was stopped by two policemen. He was brought to a police post and questioned. Soon after, an unidentified man arrived on the scene and later on drove Sombath’s vehicle away. The incident which was captured in a video recording from a closed-circuit television revealed that a white pick-up truck arrived on the scene and a group of men escorted Sombath to the truck and drove away.
- Category: Statements
The Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD) joins the Families of Victims of Involuntary Disappearance (FIND) and other human rights groups in the Philippines in jubilation for Pres. Benigno Simeon Aquino III’s signing into law the Republic Act No. 10350, otherwise known as the Anti-Enforced Disappearance Act of 2012.
- Category: Statements
11 December 2012 - The Asian Federation Against Enforced Disappearances (AFAD), a regional federation of human rights organizations working directly on the issue of enforced disappearances lauds the attached release of the research “Alleged Perpetrators – Stories of Impunity in Jammu and Kashmir,” painstakingly undertaken by the International Peoples’ Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-Administered Kashmir [IPTK] and the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons [APDP].