A/HRC/45/CRP.11 the involvement of Government officials, at least by tolerance or acquiescence; and the refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or the concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person.22 35. An enforced disappearance removes the disappeared person from the protection of the law and places his or her life at serious and constant risk, for which the State is internationally responsible.23 It is a continuous and complex human rights violation and crime, which entails violations of other rights recognized in human rights treaties, including of the right to life, the prohibition of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the liberty and security of person, and the right to recognition as a person before the law.24 36. Given the gravity of the crime, the prohibition of enforced disappearance of persons and the corresponding obligation to investigate and punish those responsible is considered to be of jus cogens, or a peremptory norm of international law.25 37. International human rights standards also stipulate that any person deprived of liberty shall be held in an officially recognized place of detention26 and that States shall have official up-to-date registries of detainees.27 38. There is no time limit under international human rights standards for an enforced disappearance to occur.28 Both UN bodies dealing with the issue – the Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED)29 and the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID)30 – have consistently emphasized this.31 A person can therefore be considered forcibly disappeared every time his/her deprivation of liberty is not acknowledged 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 8 Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons (1994) (to which Venezuela is a party), art. 2. Human Rights Committee, General Comment n. 36 (Right to Life), CCPR/C/GC/36, para. 58. Ibid. Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Case Goiburú and others v. Paraguay (22 September 2006), para. 84; See also ICED, art. 9. Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons, art. 11; See also 1992 Declaration on the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance, art. 10. Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons, art. 11. The Mission acknowledges that IHRL and the conventional definition of enforced disappearance do not require a prolonged duration of disappearance. The Mission has, however, opted for the expression “short term enforced disappearance” to characterise most situations reviewed in the report. While the Mission notes that both short and longer term disappearances are violations of international human rights law and unacceptable, this serves to differentiate the cases documented in the report from cases, too common in the region, where the person disappeared never re-appears or if appearing after a prolonged time was never presented before a judge. The Mission considers it is important, not least for the families of those subject to prolonged disappearance or who have never returned, to recognize the particular gravity of such cases which are all too often synonymous with killing. In the case Yrusta v. Argentina, the CED recalled that “[…] in order to constitute an enforced disappearance, the deprivation of liberty must be followed by a refusal to acknowledge such deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law, regardless of the duration of the said deprivation of liberty or concealment”, CED/C/10/D/1/2013, para. 10.3. In this case, the period in question was ‘more than seven days’. See paras. 2.3 and 10.4 to 10.6. The WGEID has often referred to “short-term disappearances” indicating that “there is no time limit, no matter how short, for an enforced disappearance to occur”, as the first hours of deprivation of liberty are often those during which violations and abuses, including torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, occur. See, for instance, A/HRC/39/46, para. 143 and https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20416&LangID=E. See also European Court of Human Rights, Case El-Masri v. The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, judgment of 13 December 2012. In this case, the period in question was of 23 days; “[…] the Court considers that the applicant’s abduction and detention amounted to ‘enforced disappearance’ as defined in international law. The applicant’s ‘enforced disappearance’, although temporary, was characterized by an on-going situation of uncertainty and unaccountability, which extended through the entire period of his captivity […]”. Ibid., para. 240.