Documenting Enforced Disappearances in Participating States of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)

Since 2014, Crude Accountability has researched the issue of enforced disappearances within the OSCE region. As a founding member of the Prove They Are Alive! campaign, Crude Accountability and our partners documented enforced disappearances in Turkmenistan, one of the most closed and repressive countries in the OSCE region and in the world. Ranked alongside North Korea for its closed and authoritarian regime, Turkmenistan forcibly disappears people into its prison system in a gross violation of international standards and human rights.

The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance defines an enforced disappearance as “the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the 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.”

International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, Article 2, Dec. 20, 2006, UN General Assembly resolution 61/177.

In 2022-2023, Crude Accountability, in cooperation with members of the Turkmenistan Working Group and the Working Group on the Fight Against Torture of the Civic Solidarity Platform (CSP), initiated a project to research the issue of enforced disappearances in Participating States of the OSCE. The project focused on the issue of enforced disappearances within the context of the OSCE December 2020 decision, which was adopted by consensus at the Ministerial Council Meeting in Tirana, Albania in December 2020, for an expanded OSCE commitment on torture prevention. This commitment includes the fight against enforced disappearances and incommunicado detention.

Initially focusing on the Balkans, Belarus, Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Ukraine, the project drew attention to the ongoing horrors of enforced disappearances in the contexts of conflict and repression.

The Balkans, Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Ukraine provide examples of enforced disappearances in conflict zones—both as a tool of regimes and armies, and as a product of war.

Belarus, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan are examples of regimes that use enforced disappearance as a tool of repression, even in peacetime. However, the use of enforced disappearances in all seven cases is one that is related to repression, as our policy papers demonstrate.

In 2025, Crude Accountability began to research enforced disappearances, inhuman treatment, and forced migration in another OSCE member state—the United States of America. Focusing on the remigration policy of the Trump presidency, as administered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the report documents alleged cases during 2025.   

We recognize that the problem of enforced disappearances is a critical concern throughout the OSCE region. Addressing this gross human rights violation is a task that is not only required, but urgent.

Click below to read the policy papers on enforced disappearances from our experts and contributors.