Zavadski’s widow, HR defender campaign for ratification of International Convention for Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance

Sviatlana Zavadskaya, widow of TV cameraman Dzmitry Zavadski who disappeared and was later murdered in 2000, her current husband Siarhei Bakhun, as well as Brest human rights defender Raman Kisliak, have addressed the Belarusian Council of Ministers with a demand to sign the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, and to urge the Belarusian Parliament to ratify the treaty.

The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance was adopted and opened for ratification by the UN General Assembly in 2006. The Convention took its legal force in 2010, and has been ratified by 20 countries.

The campaigners hope that Belarus, the country where a number of famous people disappeared in 1999-2000 (Minister of Defense Yury Zakharanka, politician Viktar Hanchar, businessman Anatol Krasouski, as well as Dzmitry Zavadski), will demonstrate its wish to guarantee the protection of its citizens from enforced disappearances by signing and ratifying the Convention.

The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICCPED) is an international human rights instrument of the United Nations and intended to prevent forced disappearance defined in international law, crimes against humanity.

"Enforced disappearance" is defined in Article 2 of the Convention as “the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups 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 place such a person outside the protection of the law.”