Enforced disappearance, civil resistance and the rule of law

12.11.2025 18:30 – 20:00

Enforced disappearance has long featured as an instrument of state terror, whose loitering effects challenge any attempt at restoring the rule of law. Once largely used by military dictatorships, enforced disappearance now happens in every region of the world and in a wide range of contexts. It most often includes governments’ involvement, ranging from the direct responsibility of state agents to complicity with armed non-state actors and participation by omission. It is therefore a polymorphous form of violence not only because of its staggering figures—thousands or tens of thousands of victims in several countries—but also because of its multiple repercussions. It affects the victims' families and loved ones as well as the whole social fabric through the spreading of terror, the disarticulation of networks of sociability and the introduction of ruptures of meaning into historical narratives.

Enforced disappearance has been recognized as a crime against humanity since the adoption by the United Nations of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance in 2006. Yet today many states and armed non-state actors still perpetrate enforced disappearance, while survivors, victims’ families and civil organizations, often at great risk, continue their struggle to find their loved ones and to receive justice, truth and reparation. This panel will debate these issues with a special focus on Colombia and Sri Lanka.

The panel discussion will be followed by a visit of Images rémanentes de la disparition forcée, an audiovisual exhibition in the lobby of Uni Mail.

Lieu

Bâtiment: Uni Mail

MS160

entrée libre

Fichiers joints

Poster_TR_Enforced_Disappearance.pdf

396.7 Kb