Every August 30, on the International Day of the Disappeared, ICTJ strives to remind the world that in many ways the human rights movement and the struggle against impunity came of age around the issue of enforced disappearances. Indeed, processes that came to form the field of transitional justice were born from the search for truth and justice about the forcibly disappeared. From assisting criminal prosecutions to ensuring that official inquiries and truth commissions give adequate resources and focus to the issue, to advocating for policies and shaping legislation that address the impact of the crimes on the immediate family, ICTJ’s work is permeated with efforts to achieve justice for victims of this heinous crime and their families.

In Lebanon, our engagement has been in direct support of the efforts of the <families of the disappeared. It focused on supporting development of the Draft Law for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared Persons in 2012 by providing technical, logistical and financial input throughout the process. The draft law was developed by organizations associated with families of the missing and was submitted to Parliament in April 2014. In April 2015, this draft law, in addition to another draft on the same topic were reviewed and consolidated by the Human Rights Parliamentary Committee into one document referred to as the Consolidated Draft Law for Missing and Disappeared Persons which was recently transferred to the Administrative and Justice Parliamentary Committee for revision.

The struggle for justice in relation to enforced disappearance includes looking at some of the more hidden consequences of the crime. Our 2015 report The Disappeared and Invisible: Revealing the Enduring Impact of Enforced Disappearances on Women canvassed 31 countries to see how the crime of enforced disappearance affects women as both the disappeared and the female relatives of the disappeared. It reviewed common strategies that transitional justice mechanisms use to deal with enforced disappearance and reflected on their ability to meet the specific needs of women. In Nepal and Lebanon, we developed specific sets of recommendations for policies on redress of wives of the disappeared who continue to suffer serious social, psychological, legal, and financial effects on their lives and the lives of their children.