Survivors and the Origin of the Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance

Abstract

In this chapter, Rice describes the process of drafting the United Nations International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, offering the extraordinary perspective of a rare survivor of the disappearances in Argentina’s Dirty War and detailing not only his own story, but also how survivors and their families helped to define the core terms and scope of this international legal instrument. Rice’s essay provides an important reminder of how the law functions not as a set of abstract principles, but as a generative tool to respond to the legal, political, economic, affective, and corporeal suffering of its claimants, and how, in our current moment, a law may be used to respond vigorously to conditions beyond those from which it sprang.