Morocco Advocates Universal Ratification of Int'l Convention on Enforced Disappearances in Geneva

“Eradicating enforced disappearances requires collective determination and a shared sense of responsibility,” stated the Moroccan delegation to the 1st World Congress on Enforced Disappearances.

“We urge all states to join the 77 nations that have ratified the Convention and to consider recognizing the competence of its monitoring mechanisms,” the delegation pleaded during a panel organized by Morocco, Argentina, France, and Samoa, the four countries of the “Core group” committed to promoting universal ratification of this Convention, which came into force in 2010.

“Such measures will not only strengthen the international arsenal of justice but also reaffirm our commitment to victims and their families, who deserve truth, justice, and reparation,” according to the same source.

Speaking at the end of the two-day Congress, Fatima Barkan, Secretary General of the Interministerial Delegation for Human Rights (DIDH), pointed out that this event is just a “first step towards the total and definitive eradication of enforced disappearance.”

According to Ms. Barkan, the ICPPED offers an important legal and operational framework, which cannot be fully exploited without frank and constructive dialogue and a pooling of efforts by all the stakeholders concerned.

“The universal ratification and optimal implementation of the Convention, to which we all aspire, will be the cumulative result of its appropriation by the various member states,” she stressed. The regional seminar that Morocco intends to organize will constitute a ‘significant milestone’ on this path, in the sense that it will enable the exchange of best practices and help informed decision-making, based on lived experience in a common context, Ms. Barkan added.

Morocco, one of the first signatories to the Convention in 2007, believes in the necessity to initiate this regional dialogue to share its experience, as one of the first signatory states, and in the light of its solid and regular interaction with the Committee against Enforced Disappearances, she explained.