- Category: Statements
The Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD) strongly condemns the Sri Lanka’s police and military forces’ halting of the families of the disappeared and human rights defenders in NorthSri Lanka from travelling to join a protest action in Colombo.
A mobilization of 600 people gathered in Vavuniya on 5 March to demand for truth and justice for their disappeared kin in a protest action organized by the Association of the Families Searching for theDisappeared Relatives set on the following day. The families initially intended to submit a petition to theUN office in Colombo to determine the fate of their loved ones.
- 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: News
After 16 long years of concerned citizens’ hard-fought struggle to criminalize enforced disappearance in the country, there is now a law against Enforced Disappearance in the Asian region with the passage of RA No. 10353, otherwise known as the “Anti-Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance Act of 2012.” What’s more, its Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) have been recently crafted and signed.
- Category: Urgent Appeals
To: Ms. Rashida Manjoo, Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Mr. Frank La Rue, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression; Mr. Maina Kiai, Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association; Ms. Margaret Sekaggya, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders; Mr. Christof Heyns, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions; and Mr. Olivier de Frouville, Chair-Rapporteur, Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances
From: Mugiyanto, Chairperson and Mary Aileen Diez-Bacalso, Secretary-General, Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD)
Date: 18 February 2013
Re: Alarming human rights situation in Nepal with the arrest of 23 human rights defenders and a mother with a three year-old child
- 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.