Sea-news.az reports that in accordance with United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/RES/65/209 adopted in 2010, August 30 is annually observed as the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances. The resolution aims to draw global attention to the rise of enforced disappearances—situations where individuals are arrested, detained, or abducted against their will.
UN Framework and Global Impact
- UN Convention: One of the core legal mechanisms against enforced disappearances is the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances, adopted in 2006.
- Severe Consequences: Victims of these practices frequently face torture and lawlessness, while the abduction of children constitutes a direct violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
- Unresolved Cases: According to UN experts, enforced disappearances have become a tool to generate a climate of terror, leaving hundreds of thousands of cases globally uninvestigated.
Statistics on Missing Persons in Azerbaijan Resulting from Armenian Aggression
AZƏRTAC reports that as of June 30, official data from the State Commission on Prisoners of War, Hostages, and Missing Persons indicates that 4,010 individuals have been registered as missing as a result of Armenia’s military aggression.
- First Karabakh War: 4,004 individuals (spanning the 1988–1994 conflict and occupation period).
- Second Karabakh War (2020): 6 individuals during the 44-day war.
- Demographics: The missing include 3,228 military personnel and 782 civilians (comprising 71 children, 288 women, and 319 elderly individuals).
Search, Exhumation, and DNA Identification Operations
Following the 2020 Patriotic War and the 2023 anti-terror measures, efforts to locate and identify burial sites of missing citizens in the liberated territories have intensified significantly.
- Human Remains: Remains presumed to belong to 893 individuals have been discovered, including 253 exhumed from mass graves.
- Genetic Research Center: Established within the Main Military Medical Directorate of the State Security Service (DTX), the center has collected biological samples from 11,542 donors among the relatives of missing persons to archive their DNA profiles.
- Mass Graves: Search and excavation operations in the liberated regions have uncovered 32 mass graves to date.
