National Security Advisor Susan Rice stated the following:
Today,
on the International Day for the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, we
stand in solidarity with the men and women around the world whose own
governments have abducted
them and detained them in secret. In too many countries, repressive
regimes confronted by citizens trying to hold their leaders accountable
will resort to "disappearing" their critics. Some of these disappeared
individuals are tortured and held for extended
periods. Others are quietly killed with no official record of their
deaths, compounding the grief of family and friends who are left to
wonder why. Worldwide there are tens of thousands of unresolved
enforced disappearance cases, some of which are decades
old. The United States calls on countries to remove all obstacles to
independent and transparent investigations into these cases so that
those who have lost loved ones can finally learn their fate.
In
recent years, we have continued to see high numbers of enforced
disappearances, especially during times of conflict and repression. By
some estimates, over 65,000 people
have vanished in Syria since the conflict there began in 2011.
According to the UN’s Commission of Inquiry on Syria, this has included
activists and others whom the Asad regime perceived to be insufficiently
loyal to the government. Egypt has seen an unprecedented
spike in enforced disappearances, with Egyptian security forces
increasingly relying on this tactic to silence and intimidate the
government's critics. Last August the UN Human Rights Council Working
Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances reported
a 100 percent increase in reported cases in Egypt over the previous
year; in February, that same Working Group cited another forty new
cases. And in North Korea, in a UN Commission of Inquiry reported at
length in 2014 on how enforced disappearances are one
of the many ways that government seeks to bolster its power by
terrorizing its own people. We are also concerned about UN reports of
disappearances in other countries -- from Eritrea to the case of
pro-democracy activist Itai Dzamara in Zimbabwe. In our
engagements around the world, the United States has raised with
governments specific cases of enforced disappearances, and we will
continue to do so at the most senior level.
The
United States calls on all countries to put an end to enforced
disappearances and hold accountable those responsible for this
practice.
National Security Council Spokesperson Ned Price stated the following:
Today,
the President signed the instrument of ratification for the Hague
Convention on International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of
Family Maintenance. This
Convention contains numerous groundbreaking provisions that, for the
first time on a global scale, will establish uniform, simple, fast, and
inexpensive procedures for the processing of international child support
cases, which benefits children and those responsible
for their care. While similar procedures are already the norm in the
United States, establishing them as the international standard
represents a considerable advance on prior child support conventions. Ratification of the Convention will mean that more children
residing in the United States will receive the financial support they
need from their parents, whether their parents reside in the United
States or in a foreign country party to the Convention.
Source: The White House, Office of the Press Secretary
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