THE deplorable practice of enforced disappearances is an affront to due process and the rule of law. Pakistan has struggled for decades to root out this evil, with various dispensations promising to recover the ‘missing’.

These efforts have met with varying degrees of success, but the fact is that people continue to ‘disappear’ in the country. Civil society and the courts, as well as the relatives of the missing, have maintained pressure on the state to trace disappeared individuals and to abide by the law when detaining suspects.

The current administration has, like those before it, promised to look into the issue. The federal law minister told a media briefing recently that the Islamabad High Court-mandated committee probing enforced disappearances was being reformed. He observed that though the issue could not be solved “overnight”, the reconstituted body would have a “parliamentary presence”.

While it is welcome that the government appears to be serious about the issue of missing persons, it should be remembered that this is at least the third official body probing the problem. Aside from the aforementioned committee, the Supreme Court had formed in 2011 a Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, while upon the provincial high court’s orders, Balochistan’s administration had constituted a similar body in 2022.

It would not be wrong to say that numerous commissions or committees will not end the practice, though these bodies may be important. Instead, what is required is the will of the state to ensure that all individuals picked up by security agencies are done so as per the law, their families are informed of their detention, and they have access to counsel to defend themselves in court.

Perhaps the government’s move to include parliamentary oversight of the committee could bring more transparency and ensure that those within the state machinery responsible for illegal detentions are held accountable. The state will have to pursue this issue with determination and empathy, and pledge to reform its practices so that they are in consonance with constitutional demands, and the requirements of due process.

Sadly, in the past, certain state functionaries, among them those occupying the highest offices in the land, have belittled the issue, making controversial claims that many people ‘disappear’ on their own. Such a condescending attitude will not help end this practice. According to the Supreme Court-mandated commission, 23pc of cases are still pending.

The state’s job should be to solve all the remaining cases, and make sure that no more are added to the list of the missing. Pakistan can very much battle insurgency, terrorism and crime using the tools available within the law. As the past decades have shown, the country has not been made more secure by ‘disappearing’ people suspected of wrongdoing.

Published in Dawn, April 27th, 2024