AFAD 25 Years Video Teaser

This AFAD video teaser is an opening salvo of the yearlong campaign and fight Against Enforced Disappearances and for the Protection, not Persecution, of Human Rights Defenders, across Asia.

a continuing crime
a disappearing act

What's Happening

Today, on International Women’s Day, AFAD pays tribute to the strength of all women, to those who have played a major role in the fight against enforced disappearances in the past and to those who continue their struggle for truth and justice today. 

Despite all the difficulties faced by women victims of this crime, women are often at the forefront of the struggle against enforced disappearances, being wives, mothers, sisters and human rights defenders at the same time.
 

GENEVA (24 February 2017) – United Nations human rights experts* are calling on Bangladesh to act now to halt an increasing number of enforced disappearances in the country.

The UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances says the number of cases has risen from a few isolated cases a few years ago, to more than 40 now, and that the number is continuing to grow. Independent reports blame the Rapid Action Battalion of the Bangladesh Police for several disappearances and extra-judicial executions, notably of political opponents of the Government. 

ODHIKAR - Coalition for Human Rights brings the situation of the Rohingya Muslim community of Myanmar’s Rakhine state to the notice of the United Nations Human Rights Council to seek immediate effective intervention from the international human rights community to protect the victims from ethnic cleansing.
 

AFAD wins Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award

Ms.Mary Aileen Bacalso, the secretary general of AFAD said the winning of the award will amplify their efforts and gains here in Asia especially coming from Taiwan which had a common experience of forced disappearances by the government before the lifting of the martial law in July 1987.

Click here to listen to the full interview.

The Federation

AFAD map