The GHRP Facilitates the Drafting of a General Comment on Enforced Disappearances in the Context of Migration

25 April 2023

The United Nations (UN) Committee on Enforced Disappearances completed the first draft of its very first General Comment (GC) – now out for consultation – on enforced disappearances in the context of migration.

The Geneva Human Rights Platform, supported by the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, facilitated the drafting process by organizing a complementary informal one-week retreat for the Committee and additional background research support.

Barbara Lochbihler and Milica Kolakovic-Bojovic, Vice-Chairs of the Committee and Co-Rapporteurs of this GC are expecting the draft to go for adoption in the next session of the Committee, to be held in September this year.

‘The many substantive comments received during the first round of consultations on the concept note allowed us to incorporate the views of many states and other stakeholders into the current draft, and we look forward to further comments and engagement with stakeholders in the lead-up to our September session’ says Milica Kolakovic-Bojovic.

‘The most important work will start then, when we will take the document from Geneva to the regions, communicating its meaning, importance and potential use. It is at the national level where this document will become most meaningful, and of course in the constructive dialogues, when it will guide the Committee in its questions and recommendations’ underlines Barbara Lochbihler.

‘We are now working with the Committee and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights towards the dissemination of this new General Comment and will soon publish a short research brief outlining how General Comments, and this one in particular, can help to make a change on the ground’ explains Felix Kirchmeier, Executive Director of the Geneva Human Rights Platform.