New Technologies and Enforced Disappearances: The Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances – Exploring a New World between Opportunities and Challenges

In September 2023, the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) joined the numerous Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council which, over the past decade, analysed the subject of the human rights impacts of new technologies and it published a thematic study on ‘new technologies and enforced disappearances’. The Chapter briefly presents the gestation and contents of the study, but its main aim is to analyse the role played – if any – by new technologies, and in particular digital, information and communication technologies, in the regular activities of the WGEID, with a view at identifying innovative methods to carry out its mandate. The functions of the WGEID are illustrated, together with the opportunities that new technologies may offer to perform them. The challenges currently posed to the WGEID and its ‘counterparts’ by the use of new technologies in terms of security, verification and accessibility are also considered. The concluding remarks offer a reflection on how some of the findings and observations made with regard to the WGEID could be relevant also for the work of the Committee on Enforced Disappearances.