Ambassador M. Chatardova spoke on February 17, 2017 at the High-Level Meeting convened by the President of the General Assembly to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. This meeting held a special place for the Czech Republic as the Convention was ratified recently on February 8, 2017 and will enter into force on March 10. Ambassador Chatardova emphasized the importance of the document by saying that “though the Czech Republic has not been historically plagued by this phenomenon on any massive scale, the Convention is still of the utmost relevance for our society too”.

As of December 2016 a total of 54 countries are parties to the Convention. This Convention, heavily modeled on the UN Convention Against Torture, is supposed to protect all people from enforced disappearance and seeks to establish an international mechanism to bring the perpetrators to justice through international cooperation. Enforced disappearance is classified as a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and occurs, when a person is secretly abducted or imprisoned by a state or a political organization with the intent of placing the victim outside the protection of the law.