The United Nations announced today, Tuesday, that up to one million people have "disappeared" in Iraq over the past half-century, a period marked by the rule of Saddam Hussein, the U.S.-led military occupation, and the rise of the extremist group ISIS. The UN working group on enforced disappearances urged Iraq, one of the countries with the highest number of missing persons in the world, to search for victims and hold perpetrators accountable. However, the report indicated that the failure to define enforced disappearance as a crime in Iraqi law hampers this effort.
The report stated, "The UN working group on enforced disappearances urged Iraq to immediately establish a framework to prevent, combat, and address this heinous crime." The spokesperson for the Iraqi government and the Ministry of Interior did not provide any comments. The United Nations noted in the report that up to 290,000 people, including nearly 100,000 Kurds, disappeared in the "genocide campaign" waged by Saddam Hussein in the Kurdistan region between 1968 and 2003.
Disappearance continued after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, during which at least 200,000 Iraqis were detained, with nearly half held in facilities managed by the U.S. or the UK. The commission stated, "There are reports that detainees were arrested without judicial warrants for their involvement in insurgencies, while others were ‘civilians who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time’." A new wave of kidnappings coincided with ISIS's declaration of a caliphate over parts of Iraq.
The commission added, "Other ongoing patterns include claims of enforced disappearances of children, particularly Yazidis born after their mothers were sexually assaulted in ISIS camps." The committee reported estimates of 250,000 to one million people missing since 1968 and called on Iraq to also establish an independent working group to ensure the creation of lists of detainees and inform their families of their whereabouts.
