Fadel Abdulghany
On 31 August 2026, the United Nations General Assembly adopted, without a vote, a resolution submitted by Syria designating 19 December as an international day of recognition for the women searching for missing persons. It is a step that carries a real political and moral weight, particularly as this resolution emerged from the experience of the families of the missing.
However, its value lies in what it can contribute to achieving, not in the act of recognition in itself. For this kind of occasion doesn’t establish a new search mechanism, nor does it create a new criminal responsibility, but it does renew the political momentum for giving effect to rights and obligations firmly established in international humanitarian law and international human rights law: the duty to search for the missing and to clarify their fate, the right of families to know the fate of their relatives, and the right to reparation and accountability where the disappearance constitutes a violation of international law. Therefore, the distance separating recognition from rights is the question this day raises, not the answer it provides.
As for the gendered dimension of the issue, it is structural, and it can’t be reduced to the fact that most of those searching for their forcibly disappeared relatives are women. For disappearance redistributes power, responsibilities, and risks within the family. When a man disappears, his wife or his mother or his daughter may become the principal breadwinner of the family and its representative before institutions, at a time where she may lack legal authority over property or the power to take decisions concerning the children.
This gap between practical responsibility and legal authority represents a central gendered harm arising from disappearance; it is a matter that relates to equality, non-discrimination, and access to remedies, and isn’t merely a matter of social assistance. The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women recognized, in paragraph 42 of the addendum to its General Recommendation No. 30, that persons searching for missing relatives in situations of armed conflict, and they are often women, face distinct impacts and legal obstacles in confronting impunity.
The women who search aren’t a homogeneous group; their needs and the risks they face differ according to marital status, displacement status, and the party that was in control of the place where the disappearance occurred. And no policy becomes adequate merely by describing itself as gender-sensitive. Women are also present among the disappeared, and not only among those searching for them. According to the data of the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), no fewer than 177,021 persons remain counted among the forcibly disappeared since March 2011, among them 8,984 women and 4,536 children; this is a documented minimum of cases of enforced disappearance, and not a comprehensive count of all missing Syrians.
So it follows that disappearance isn’t an isolated event, but a state of waiting that may extend for years or decades, until time itself becomes part of the harm. And every year that passes without the truth being revealed may deepen the poverty of families caused by the loss of their breadwinner and impose upon them extremely harsh choices relating to custody and property. The solution isn’t to declare the missing person dead merely to enable his relatives to exercise their ordinary civil rights while his fate remains unknown. The guidance of the International Committee of the Red Cross on certificates of absence and declarations of absence sets out one of the options available in national law, which consists of recognizing the person as missing while preserving his legal personality, in a way that allows the family to meet its civil and economic needs without presuming his death.
And the search isn’t an entirely neutral humanitarian task; it may challenge official denial and lead to evidence bearing on individual and institutional responsibility. And the women who undertake it may become actors in the public sphere, even without defining themselves as human rights defenders.
There are two further distinctions that are indispensable. The first separates the right to information from the right to publication; families have the right to obtain accurate information concerning the fate of their relatives, but that doesn’t mean making names or DNA data or grave sites available to the public. Premature disclosure may also endanger evidence and cause irreversible harm to privacy.
Therefore, participation should be built on informed consent and confidentiality, and should be subject to the principle of do no harm. As for the second distinction, it separates the search from accountability without severing the link between them; the search should begin immediately, and it may not wait until a prosecutable case becomes available, yet it reveals, at the same time, material of evidentiary value, from detention records to burial sites, which should be preserved under safeguards relating to consent and data protection, rather than transferred automatically to the security agencies or the judicial authorities.
Hence, the criterion for judging this day is the actual empowerment it leads to, and it achieves its purpose if the women who search obtain real seats in the bodies that manage the file of the missing persons, and an effective role in setting the priorities of the search, and a standing that allows them to challenge the policies that exclude victims or violate confidentiality; and it fails if it is reduced to speeches praising the patience of mothers and the sacrifices of wives.
Focusing on women doesn’t mean that men are less important; men make up the overwhelming majority of the forcibly disappeared in Syria, while the consequences of their disappearance fall to a large extent upon the women around them, who have become the principal searchers, at a time where their influence remains limited within the institutions that manage the search operations. And the value of recognizing their role in resisting disappearance and impunity doesn’t acquire its true meaning unless it contributes to reinforcing the universal right of every family to know the fate of the missing person, and to obtain truth, reparation, and accountability, rather than taking the place of this right.
