Enforced disappearance is a crime involving secret abduction and/or imprisonment that violates a number of a person’s basic rights such as the the right to security and dignity, right to fair trial, right not to be tortured, right to truth, right to family life, and when the disappeared is killed, the right to identification and proper burial or cremation. It is a tool often used by tyrannical governments to stifle dissent and terrorize communities.

The International Convention on Enforced Disappearance (Convention) recognizes the right of any person not to be subjected to enforced disappearance. Its a non-derogable right which means that no circumstances may be invoked as a justification to carry out enforced disappearances. its is the first instrument to recognize this right. 

The Convention is a product of decades of struggle of families of the disappeared around the world to have a normative human rights instrument that crystallizes the right not to disappear and seeks to guarantee non-repetition by establishing accountability on the government. A Philippines under the Convention is a Philippines committed to human rights, justice and truth.