PBI-Kenya accompanied Kayole Community Justice Centre calls for ratification of International Convention on enforced disappearances

Published by Brent Patterson on July 13, 2024July 13, 2024

In its most recent e-newsletter, PBI-Kenya notes:

“Perpetua Kariuki, human rights defender from Kayole Community Justice Centre, and Bernard Gachie of PBI Kenya embarked on an advocacy tour across Europe to highlight the state of human rights in Kenya. Their journey took them through Switzerland, The Netherlands and Germany, where they engaged in crucial discussions on enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions.

A central objective of their tour was to advocate for the ratification of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. This treaty is crucial as it provides a framework to prevent enforced disappearances, ensure accountability for perpetrators, and provide justice and reparations for victims. Kenya signed the treaty in 2007 but has yet to ratify it.”

The full text of the Treaty can be read here.

Among the countries that have ratified the Convention are Germany and Spain (September 2009), the Netherlands (March 2011) and Switzerland (December 2016).

Canada urged to ratify the Convention

Canada has neither signed nor ratified this International Convention that came into effect almost 14 years ago on December 23, 2010.

In March of this year, the Canadian Press reported that an interim report from the International Commission on Missing Persons, based in The Hague, recommends the Canada ratify the United Nations International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED).

In March 2023, Catherine Morris and Rebekah Smith commented: “Since 2017, Canada has been urged to become a State Party to the ICPPED.”

They add: “That year, Canadian federal, provincial, and territorial ministers ‘agreed to pursue discussions on the possibility of Canada becoming a party’ to the ICPPED. In 2018, Canada reaffirmed this intention during its third Universal Periodic Review (UPR) by the UN Human Rights Council. So far there is no timeline for completion of necessary consultations among federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal officials.”

One of the reasons Canada has not signed the Convention could be due to the high number of forcibly disappeared Indigenous peoples in this country.

In Canada, more than 150,000 Indigenous children were taken from their parents and sent to at least 139 state-funded “residential schools” operated by churches starting in 1883 as part of a genocidal campaign of forced assimilation.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) are implicated in the forcible removal of Indigenous children from their families. Painting by Kent Monkman.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada documented the deaths of 3,201 children at these residential schools, but its chair Justice Murray Sinclair has stated that 6,000 children may have died in them, while Cindy Blackstock and Pam Palmater have estimated that more than 12,000 children died in them.

Morris and Smith state: “Canada’s pattern of failure to ensure effective and timely remedies for disappearances of Indigenous persons may amount to acquiescence in international crimes of enforced disappearance. Canada’s international law obligations require urgent steps to end official inaction and complicity.”

We also note that while Colombia (July 2012), Honduras (April 2008) and Mexico (March 2008) have ratified the Convention, Guatemala (February 2007) and Indonesia (September 2010) have only signed it. Nicaragua and Nepal have neither signed nor ratified the Convention.

We continue to follow this in all countries where PBI has a presence.