The Working Group on Enforced Disappearances and involuntary of the United Nations will visit Uruguay on July 7 in search of “obtaining information” about the disappeared persons in the dictatorship and “identify the progress that has been made in terms of the right to truth, justice, reparation and memory.”
“As part of the visit, the Working Group will meet with relatives of disappeared personsrepresentatives of civil society organizations, groups of victims and family members, experts, as well as academics,” details the statement released this Thursday.
The survey will be until July 14, as agreed by the group with the government. During that period, they will turn their efforts to help the relatives to locate the disappeared persons and, in case of death, to “search, respect, exhume, identify, and restore their mortal remains.”
After reaching an agreement, the UN team urged the different organizations, groups or people who have information about these cases to collaborate. “In preparation for the visit the Working Group invites social organizations, academia, experts and relatives of disappeared persons to send contributions in writing until June 24. Montevideo”, sentences the group.
The organization’s visit comes after the National Human Rights Institution and the Ombudsman’s Office (Inddhh) denounced in a report that the Uruguayan government had refused to “facilitate” it.
According to the Institution, the Working Group tried to arrange a meeting for the month of November with the aim of “observing and advising on the search for the disappeared in the country”, but the government “expressed reservations regarding the dates” and then did not respond “to a second communication from the Working Group reiterating the request.”
The result of the report on the visit to Uruguay will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in September 2023.
