The UN Secretary-General (UNSG) Antonio Guterres described such method of intimidation as a serious violation of human rights and urged countries to help put an end to those crimes.

Meanwhile, UN Special Representative and Chief of the Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo Caroline Ziadeh called for renewed efforts to solve the victims’fate.

Ziadeh added that doing so may contribute to a broader process of confidence-building, reconciliation and peacekeeping in this self-proclaimed republic, which accumulated 6,655 cases of missing persons from January 1998 to December 2000, of which 1,621 remain unresolved.

The United Nations considers as cases of enforced disappearances those where “persons are arrested, detained or transferred against their will.”

According to resolution 47/133 of 18 December 1992, the term further applies when persons are deprived of their liberty by government agents, organized groups or private individuals acting on behalf of, or with the support of a government.

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