In honor of the 30,000 victims of the Argentine military dictatorship of the 1970s, the Latin American Federation of Associations of Families of Detained-Disappeared Persons declared August 30th the "International Day of the Disappeared."
A "missing person" is a person whose whereabouts are unknown for some reason. This is generally related to wars, disasters, the displacement of migrants or refugees, kidnapping, or other situations of violence resulting from organized crime. However, it also includes people who have gone missing, minors or women who have run away from home, and potential victims of kidnapping or homicide. All of these people's whereabouts are unknown.
For its part, the "enforced disappearance of persons" is recognized as a human rights violation, defined by the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances as "the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty, committed by agents of the State or by any other person or group of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which removes him or her from the protection of the law."
For the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which addresses crimes against humanity from the perspective of individual criminal responsibility, not that of States, the enforced disappearance of persons consists of: "The apprehension, detention or abduction of persons by a State or political organization, or with its authorization, support or acquiescence, followed by a refusal to admit such deprivation of liberty or to provide information concerning the fate or whereabouts of such persons, with the intent to place them beyond the protection of the law for a prolonged period."
