Over the years the definition of enforced or involuntary disappearance has evolved through a number of variations within the sphere of human rights and international law. The legal definition is of great significance in determining the liability of the state in enforced disappearance or in the legal prosecution of individual perpetrators. In the past, enforced disappearances were usually treated as a violation of multiple rights (the right of freedom, the right to life, the right to bodily integrity, the right of safety, the right to a fair trial). Now, however, the international community considers disappearance as a specific violation of human rights. The prevailing consensus currently defines disappearance as including at least, the following aspects:

• there must be evidence of some form of deprivation of liberty;
• this deprivation of liberty is denied and therefore;
• the disappeared person lacks legal protection of any kind.

One day an unfamiliar car stops before your home. Armed men push their way inside and force your child, husband or brother to leave with them. From that moment on you hear nothing more of them. You go to the police, prisons, hospitals and even mortuaries to search for them. The authorities maintain they know nothing and provide no help in the search for your loved one.

Unfortunately, this kind of situation still occurs far too often, and it results in double suffering. The direct victims are at risk of undergoing torture; they are deprived of all rights and means for protection and fear for their lives every day. They are aware of the fact that no one knows of their whereabouts, which eliminates the opportunity of receiving any help from the outside world. Meanwhile, friends and relatives are forced to live with the uncertainty about the fate of the disappeared. Everyday they are tossed back and forth between feelings of hope and despair. The disappearance creates a vacuum with no chance of peace, leaving no possibility for the relative to mourn, or find any kind of peace or closure. This painful existence is the destiny of hundreds of thousands of relatives of disappeared persons.

In many countries where disappearances occur relatives have organized themselves as to provide support to each other in the struggle for truth and justice. Nearly everyone is familiar with examples of such organizations, like the mothers and grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina.
Many of these associations have also been organized on the regional level. The Latin American Federation of Associations of Relatives of Detained Disappeared (FEDEFAM) was established in 1981 and the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD) in 1998.
The most recent development is the creation of a Euro Mediterranean Federation against Enforced Disappearances (FEDEM) currently being established by several family organisations in countries around the Mediterranean Sea. Unfortunately there are many other places in the world, where cooperation between relatives' organisations is lacking and where they are in great need of knowledge and resources. The best way to assist relatives and NGOs in these regions is through facilitating an exchange of strategies and information with other organizations which have more experience with disappearances. This is one of the objectives of Aim for human rights. Read more

As soon as disappearances began to occur on a large scale, the necessity to improve international protection against disappearances became apparent.
Families and NGOs have been making constant efforts in this direction, which has led to a series of developments in international law within the United Nations and other international forums.
Since the 1980s human rights activists and advocates in Europe and Latin America have been campaigning for a treaty for protection against disappearances.
This resulted in 2006 in the 'International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances'. Read more