Initiatives for victims of enforced disappearance must do more to acknowledge women.
At its 30th session, in March 2026, the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearance adopted the first draft of its 2nd General Comment on “The impact of Enforced Disappearances on Women and Girls” and has invited UN treaty body members to provide comments on this draft. My comments address the nexus between enforced disappearances and gender-based violence and discrimination, survivor-centric access to justice, and gender sensitive reparation policies that dismantle deeply embedded gender stereotypes.
Reparations foster sustainable peace by ensuring justice for victims and survivors by breaking the cycle of impunity. The primary goal of reparations is to address the profound impact of disappearances by providing victims with redress, restoring their dignity, and repairing the social fabric. Yet the delivery of these reparations is impeded by structural forms of discrimination, both gender and intersectional, which law professor Lisa Davis has described as “invisible” because it is “normalized in practices.”
Since the 1990s, transitional justice initiatives have increasingly recommended symbolic reparations for victims of human rights violations. Such measures include public apologies, commemoration, monuments, renamed public spaces, and museums or sites of conscience. Monuments dedicated to disappeared persons and survivors have been established in several countries. Some memorials emerged through state-supported transitional justice processes, while others were initiated by families and civil society organizations.
Several countries have also dedicated public spaces to the memory of the disappeared. The Garden of the Disappeared in Switzerland, established in 2000, commemorates disappeared persons worldwide. Likewise, the Plaza de Mayo is widely regarded not only as a memorial to the disappearance but also as a symbol of the activism of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo. Former detention centers and prisons associated with disappearances have similarly been transformed into spaces of remembrance and public education.
This dynamic has been particularly evident in Latin America, where organizations such as the Madres de Plaza de Mayo and other family associations have established archives, oral history projects, and story-telling dedicated to documenting enforced disappearances and raising awareness of human rights violations. However, more must be done to acknowledge women who disappeared or the female family members of the disappeared.
In line with the United Nations’ recent Addendum to General Recommendation 30 on Women, Peace and Security to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), such initiatives must provide women with avenues for engagement and inclusion. Memorialization projects can provide important psychological, social, and cultural benefits for women affected by enforced disappearance. Meaningful consultation with women and other family members regarding the design and implementation of symbolic reparations is critical.
Mothers have frequently emerged as persistent activists, leading searches for the disappeared and spearheading advocacy campaigns and organizations. Despite their central role, they are rarely prioritized as beneficiaries within reparations frameworks.
Certain initiatives, however, provide important examples of gender-sensitive policy. Chile’s reparations program specifically designated awards for mothers, while fathers became eligible only in the mother’s absence or death. This example demonstrates the potential to incorporate the gendered experiences of mothers into the design and implementation of reparations policies.
The recent addendum underscores the role of women in pursuing justice for their disappeared family members and the gendered impact on women’s search for the truth. The addendum reiterates that “the consequences of missing persons are distinct for those—often women—who initiate searches for missing relatives and face legal impediments to addressing impunity.” Moreover, the addendum highlights the importance of allowing families to know the fate and whereabouts of their missing relatives.
Given the nature of the crime of kidnapping, obtaining evidence or witness testimony is often exceedingly challenging, particularly in contexts involving mass atrocities and large numbers of missing persons. Women may encounter additional obstacles due to reduced access to legal services and the absence of survivor-centric court processes. Protracted victim-registration processes can hinder search for remains and access to justice. The justice system itself can be alienating and not always provide appropriate measures to “protect the safety, physical and psychological well-being, dignity and privacy of victims and witnesses” as enshrined in Article 68 of the Rome Statute and consistent with the recent addendum.
A gender-centered approach is needed in investigating and prosecuting crimes of disappearance. The Office of the International Criminal Court Office of the Prosecutor has stressed “the importance of collaboration” with civil society, including by engaging with civil society and victims’ groups to “identify and gather information” and to “identify appropriate individuals … as intermediaries to support investigations.”
Once again, consistent with the Addendum to General Recommendation 30, evidentiary rules should give survivors increased agency in criminal proceedings and allow survivors to tell their stories in court.
Bringing litigation against perpetrators can also require survivors to break decades of silence about their traumas. Reparations systems should provide trauma-centered approaches to access to justice, including legal services that are gender sensitive and context specific.
Justice systems must also consider both material and moral harms and provide both pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages to the survivors of the disappeared. In the landmark “street children” case, Villagrán Morales et al. v. Guatemala, , the Inter American Court of Human Rights provided the mothers and grandmothers of the street children who were victims of forced disappearance with both pecuniary and non-pecuniary reparations for economic loss and severe emotional trauma. The Inter-American Court has indicated that reparations should aim to repair the social fabric of the community, stating that “in the history of the Law, reparations arise and take on a definite form precisely to leave revenge, private justice, behind.”
Under the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, states must legally recognize all detainees, guarantee fair trial rights, and provide accountability for perpetrators. The convention outlines that states must take measures to prevent the wrongful removal of children subjected to enforced disappearance. The convention specifically highlights aggravating circumstances in the commission of the crime against vulnerable individuals, including pregnant women, and calls for penalties that take into account the aggravating circumstances of the enforced disappearances of such individuals.
The Inter American Court of Human Rights’ case González et al. v. Mexico highlighted the nexus between disappearances and femicide. This case addressed the due diligence obligations of the state in the disappearance and death of three women whose bodies were discovered in a cotton field in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. As emphasized by the CEDAW’s independent inquiry, the abduction of the girls of Chibok by Boko Haram reinforced the linkages between abduction and disappearance of schoolgirls and sexual violence and forced marriage.
The social, economic, psychological, and cultural elements of enforced disappearance for women necessitate a comprehensive and gender-sensitive reparative framework. Such reparations may encompass pecuniary compensation, psychosocial support services, physical and psychological healthcare, educational programs, including scholarship assistance, land and housing allocation, and public apology. Although no financial compensation can restore a disappeared family member, reparative measures provide critical support by alleviating the economic and psychological hardship experienced by women, particularly in cases where the disappeared person had served as an income provider for the family.
In Movilla Galarcio et al. v. Colombia, in which a union leader was the victim of forced disappearance, the Inter-American Court underscored the differential impact of forced disappearance on women, and emphasized their role as truth seekers, asserting that reparations must avoid reinforcing gendered stereotypes. According to the Court, the state parties to the American Convention on Human Rights have “an obligation to undertake actions to recognize and guarantee the efforts of women searching for their loved ones as part of the prevention and investigation of forced disappearance … This must include reparations, which should be ordered in such a way that they do not reproduce gender stereotypes.”
Ultimately, integrating reparations within wider truth and justice restorative mechanisms is essential to ensuring that women and girls affected by enforced disappearance are active protagonists in the effort to prevent the crime from recurring. This was highlighted in the most recent domestic case on reparations. In a landmark judgment, the Nepalese Supreme Court directed the government to reform its reparations policies in line with victim centric and gender sensitive approaches consistent with international law standards, striking down deep rooted discriminatory structures regarding relief and compensation. The Court reportedly pointed out gender-biased policies that favored widowers over widows who remarried, a gender bias embedded in the policy framework that is also at odds with the constitutional guarantee of equality. By emphasizing victim participation in policymaking, the Court positioned victims as protagonists of justice rather than passive recipients of aid. Two decades into the post- conflict transition, this judgment carries the promise of reshaping transitional justice and gender sensitive reparations for the disappeared.
Integrating reparations within wider truth and justice restorative mechanisms is essential to ensuring that women and girls affected by enforced disappearance are active protagonists in the effort to guarantee non–recurrence of the crime. The narrative of victimhood must give way to a more nuanced understanding of women as drivers of truth and justice.
