The International Coalition Against Enforced Disappearances, and NGO which supports the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, now has a blog: Existence Denied. And today, it has a nice reminded of Why the Convention is urgent:
The need for this Convention in essence is very simple. Enforced disappearances have been carried out by regimes all over the world from the World War II until today. People need to be better protected from this crime. The existing legal protection mechanisms were simply not enough; they contained a lot of gaps and ambiguities, resulting in inadequate prevention and protection.The Convention establishes solid legal mechanisms ensuring protection and requiring states to cooperate internationally in bringing offenders to justice, in much the same way as the Convention Against Torture. However, the effectiveness of the Convention depends ultimately on the number of states which sign it. As a country which claims to support human rights and to work towards strengthening international human rights protections, I'd expect New Zealand to sign.
If you'd like to encourage them to do that, then download the petition, sign it, and post it back.