- Most searches for the forcibly disappeared are led by women (women searchers), who in the process face risks, attacks and harm to their health and finances.
- The work of women searchers fills the void left by states’ failure to search for forcibly disappeared people.
- Amnesty International calls on states to take diligent, gender-based and differentiated action to counter the human rights violations that women searchers suffer.
To commemorate International Day of the Disappeared, today Amnesty International is launching the international campaign “Searching without Fear,” which recognizes the crucial work of women searchers in the Americas and urges states to protect and guarantee their rights as they search for their loved ones.
While disappearances can occur for different reasons, it is states’ duty to determine the whereabouts of the disappeared. For as long as they are missing, their absence profoundly affects their family, loved ones, and communities.
In the Americas, dissenting from government policies, speaking up for rights, living in armed conflict zones or areas with organized crime, migrating without the documents that transit and destination countries require, and many other pretexts have all been used to justify the inexcusable: restricting a person’s freedom and concealing their fate and whereabouts from their families and loved ones.
As part of this campaign, Amnesty International is publishing the report Searching Without Fear: International Standards for Protecting Women Searchers in the Americas. This report acknowledges that it is chiefly women who have led the way in searching for forcibly disappeared people. Iconic and historic examples from the region are the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo in Argentina and the Chilean women of Calama during military regimes and internal armed conflicts; the Indigenous women who led the way amidst armed conflicts in countries like Guatemala and Peru; and Central American women who have crossed borders and created transnational mechanisms to search for migrants subjected to enforced disappearance.
The paradigmatic cases of Colombia and Mexico
“The campaign we are launching today draws attention to the tireless efforts of women searchers in the Americas, with the quintessential cases of Colombia and Mexico, two countries deeply scarred by enforced disappearances of all kinds. The searchers themselves are victims of the enforced disappearance of their family members or loved ones, and their work also makes them full-fledged human rights defenders. They deserve to be recognized and protected as such,” said Ana Piquer, Americas director at Amnesty International.
In Colombia, enforced disappearance is one of many forms of violence affecting the country as a result of its decades of armed conflict and socio-political violence. The Commission for Truth, Coexistence, and non-Repetition, in its final report in 2022, stated that as many as 210,000 people were victims of this grave human rights violation.
It has been organizations formed by relatives of the forcibly disappeared and by women searchers that have pressured the government to address this terrible reality. One such organization is Fundación Nydia Érika Bautista, which currently directly works on 519 cases of enforced disappearances, providing legal, documentary, remembrance, and communication support services. It also offers a leadership school for women searchers and other activities.
Meanwhile, Mexico faces a severe crisis of enforced disappearances linked to the insecurity that has afflicted country for decades. According to the National Registry of Missing and Disappeared Persons, in Mexico approximately 115,443 people have been registered as missing and disappeared and never found from December 31,1952 to August 21, 2024. There has also recently been a surge in violence toward searchers, especially women. According to the organization Artículo 19, 16 searchers have been murdered in the last six years, 13 of whom were women. Additionally, one woman searcher was disappeared during the same period.
Mexico has over 200 organizations of relatives of forcibly disappeared people, the large majority of which are headed by women. One such group in the state of Guanajuato—called Hasta Encontrarte [Until We Find You]—is primarily focused on searching, whether with state participation or through independent brigades. Through their efforts, they have located 23 unmarked graves and discovered the whereabouts of 203 forcibly disappeared people.
Women searchers at risk
Women searchers face an array of risks, threats and attacks that intersect with their own life stories, identities, ambitions and dreams, and socio-economic and cultural milieu. They should not have to face these dangers, and the fact that they do clearly shows how protections for human rights fall short.
Fundación Nydia Érika Bautista and Hasta Encontrarte are a testament to the leading role that women in the Americas have taken in searching for their family members and loved ones. Their stories also embody resistance to violence against women, against women who defend human rights, against victims of enforced disappearance, and against women searchers. Despite the risks, threats and attacks they endure, these women continue to search and to demand, loudly and clearly, an end to impunity.
“The experience of searching and of the risks, threats and attacks that women searchers are exposed to is inseparable from the very fact that they are women. It’s not coincidental, and it’s driven by the roles that society assigns to women. Their protection must take this dynamic into account to be effective,” explained Ana Piquer.
Amnesty International has been able to confirm that several rights of members of Fundación Nydia Érika Bautista and Hasta Encontrarte have been violated. These women’s searches have been marked by threats, attacks, stigmatization, discrimination and other human rights violations with consequences that persist to this day and are compounded by new violations, drawing out the cycle of violence.
For example, members of Hasta Encontrarte have been threatened and even attacked with firearms during on-the-ground search efforts. And toward the end of the 1990s, the leaders of Fundación Nydia Érika Bautista and their families were forced into exile amidst attacks, grave threats and stigmatizing discourses from authorities. Upon returning to Colombia, where they now live, they resumed their search, but the threats and attacks continue.
Amnesty International has also collected accounts about how their physical and mental health has deteriorated, about the socioeconomic fallout from the enforced disappearance of their family members and loved ones and from their on-the-ground searches, and about how states fail to recognize their work and protect them.
Another form of violence that women searchers experience is the failure to investigate and punish the enforced disappearance of their loved one, as well as subsequent attacks and threats. Despite their ceaseless efforts to denounce these violations, justice has not been served.
End institutional inaction
“States must guarantee women searchers’ right to search without fear, and they must investigate the human rights violations that these searchers have suffered. Through their efforts, these women fill the void left by institutions that fail to act efficiently and in a way that safeguards rights. It is states’ responsibility to search for forcibly disappeared people and guarantee the rights of women searchers. Their failure to do so is egregious, but even more egregious is the fact that those who do search for the missing and the forcibly disappeared, especially women, must risk their lives,” said Edith Olivares Ferreto, executive director of Amnesty International Mexico.
Amnesty International calls on states in the Americas to fulfil their obligations under international human rights law, which are described in the report. These obligations include recognizing women searchers’ right to participate in state-led searches and to search by their own means, as well as their right to defend human rights without discrimination, with a gender-based and differentiated approach. States must also protect these women from the different risks, threats and attacks on human rights to which they are exposed.
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