Guide: Enforced Disappearances in Europe – Obligations of States in International Human Rights Law

Conflict and security force abuses Chechnya Russia Ukraine Legal Guide Legal Resources
8 March 2025

Guide available in ENGLISH and RUSSIAN versions.

Enforced disappearances entail the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with a State’s authorisation, support or acquiescence. This is followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, placing the victim outside the protection of the law.

Our new Guide looks at State obligations in the European context.

PART 1 – Access to justice – looks at:

  • The obligation to create an autonomous crime of enforced disappearance in domestic law
  • The obligation to investigate acts of enforced disappearances and to bring those responsible to justice
  • The general prohibition on amnesties

PART 2 – Measures to prevent enforced disappearances – includes:

  • Legal safeguards for persons deprived of liberty
  • Prohibition of secret detention and legal safeguards
  • The obligation to maintain official registers and to grant access to interested parties
  • Inspection of places of deprivation of liberty
  • The obligation to train public officials

PART 3 – Rights of victims – focuses on:

  • The Right to know the truth and state obligations
  • The obligation to search for disappeared persons
  • Measures of reparation
  • State obligation to clarify the legal situation of disappeared persons and their relatives

The core elements of state responsibility for addressing enforced disappearances have been developed over many decades through international and regional instruments, these include:

  • The UN Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances [‘Declaration’], in adopted in 1992, the Declaration is now understood to largely codify and cwonsolidate customary international law that is legally binding on all states.
  • International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance [‘ICPPED’]
  • The General Comments and reports of the WGEID;
  • The General Comments, Reports, Concluding Observations and Views of the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances [‘CED’];
  • The Views and Concluding Observations of the UN Human Rights Committee [‘HRC’] whose legal principles apply to all states that have ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [‘ICCPR’];
  • In the American human rights system, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights [‘IACtHR’] and Inter-American Commission of Human Rights [‘IACHR’]; and,
  • In the European system, the case law of the European Court of Human Rights [‘ECtHR’], applying the rights enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights [‘ECHR’] with application to all contracting states.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe [‘PACE’], has noted that it considers the work of the above mechanisms in conjunction with that of the International Commission on Missing Persons, the International Committee of the Red Cross [‘ICRC’] and regional mechanisms such as the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus to “form a well-developed institutional and normative framework”. It has called on all member states of the Council of Europe [‘CoE’] to take steps to reinforce the existing international legal framework surrounding enforced disappearances and better implement the practices recommended in international mechanisms on enforced disappearances.

Related Resources