Iraq needs law to confront crisis of disappeared people: UN

Iraq needs law to confront crisis of disappeared people: UN
by AFP Staff Writers
Geneva (AFP) April 4, 2023

When his mother phoned, the Iraqi man was stopped at a checkpoint, on his way to visit a cousin, and said he would call back right away.

He never did, according to the mother's testimony reported Tuesday by a UN committee which urged Baghdad to establish a legal framework for tackling the "heinous crime" of disappearances.

The man, who disappeared from the checkpoint set up by "men in uniform", is among up to one million Iraqis estimated to have gone missing over the past five decades scarred by dictatorship and war.

Following a visit to Iraq last November, the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances said "ongoing patterns" of disappearances persist, requiring their own legal framework.

"As enforced disappearance still does not exist as an autonomous crime in national legislation, it cannot be prosecuted as such in Iraq," the committee said in a UN press release.

It received "a large number" of victim testimonies including that of the mother who said she had searched prisons and "everywhere" for her son, according to the release.

"But nothing, nothing, nothing" came of it, she was quoted as saying in the release, which did not name her or the son.

The committee also recommended that Iraq establish a comprehensive investigation strategy for all cases of disappearances, strengthened and enlarged forensic capacity, and a national register of inmates in detention facilities.

The committee said it "remained deeply concerned that the practice of enforced disappearance has been widespread" across Iraq over various periods, and that impunity prevails.

Iraq should "immediately establish the basis to prevent, eradicate and repair this heinous crime," the committee said.

"According to official figures, it is estimated that between 250,000 and 1,000,000 individuals have been disappeared since 1968 due to conflict and political violence," according to the UN statement.

The committee identified five waves of disappearance: during the rule of the Baath party and dictator Saddam Hussein, the subsequent US-led invasion and occupation, the self-proclaimed Islamic State group caliphate, operations to retake major cities from IS, and finally during a wave of anti-government protests.

According to the UN, hundreds of families are still searching for loved ones, suspecting they are in camps in Turkey, Syria or Iran, out of contact with the outside world.