Islamabad: leading human rights organizations and civil society at a joint press conference on Saturday condemned the government’s failure to put an end to the practice of forced disappearances, qualifying it as a deeply rooted repression tool that continues to devastate many families.
The groups, including Amnesty International, the Pakistan Human Rights Commission (HRCP) and the Defense of Human Rights (DHR), expressed a collective alarm about what they described as a systemic failure to deliver justice, truth or repairs to victims and their families.
“A defective system of responsibility and official data of the Commission for Investigation on Forced Disappearances (COIOED) reveals the scale of the problem, but also the failure of the system to provide significant justice,” said the president of the Defense of Human Rights (DHR) Amna Masood Janjua.
Mrs. Janjua said that state institutions have practiced forced disappearances with the greatest impunity for more than two decades.
HRCP, seven other groups seek justice, legal reforms on the International Day of Victims of Forced Disappearances
Other groups involved in the conference were the Balochjehti (Byc) committee, the Tahafuz (PTM) movement, the voice for the missing persons of Sindh (VMP), the National Congress of Sindhia and the Asian Federation against involuntary and obligated disappearances (AFAD).
The speakers stressed that since 2010, the commission has documented 10,592 cases, including more than 3,000 presented by the DHR. They added that 140 new cases were reported only this year.
The president of DHR said that the commission never ordered a prosecution against a single author, reinforcing a culture of impunity.
“In a handful of cases in which this commission has issued production orders, he failed miserably to fulfill them,” Janjua said.
“Our demands, ironically the same during the last 20 years, are immediately to reveal the whereabouts of all individuals disappeared by force and hold the perpetrators through independent and impartial investigations and fair essays,” he added.
The speakers, including activists for Afrasiyab Khan Khan Khattak and Tahira Abdullah rights, also pointed out that a recent amendment to the anti -terrorism law that allows security forces to stop people for up to three months is evidence that the hardening of citizens’ necks around citizens was increasing.
Real commission, reconciliation
Mrs. Abdullah described it “deplorable” that, although the National Judicial Policy Committee has announced a committee to address the issue of forced disappearances, the results are still expected.
He asked to reform the Coioed or establish a new “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” focused on the victim with the representation of the families of the disappeared.
Later, the groups published a joint statement that highlights that the authorities intentionally use disappearances as a tool to suppress political activists, ethnic minorities, journalists and human rights defenders.
The Byc reported 546 cases this year, the PTM registered 133, and the voice for missing people from Sindh noticed 40, with more than 1,300 people who are still missing.
The declaration criticized the authorities for their continuous dependence on the laws that allow arbitrary arrests, such as the Army Law, the Law of Official Secrets and the regulation of actions (in the aid of civil power) of 2011.
These laws, he said, limit judicial supervision and allow prolonged arrests of incommunicado under the pretext of national security.
Organizations said Pakistan is obliged to protect against arbitrary detention and torture. They demanded that the county should ratify the International Convention for the Protection of all the persons of forced disappearance and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Posted in Dawn, August 31, 2025
