Families of victims of enforced disappearances in the Philippines expressed optimism on the results of their meeting with members of the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances (UN WGEID), calling it an important step in addressing as urgent the rising cases of enforced disappearances in the Philippines. The UN WGEID “serves as a channel of communication between family members of victims of enforced disappearance and other sources reporting cases of disappearances, and the Governments concerned.”
On April 29, 2025, KARAPATAN and Desaparecidos had an online meeting with members of the UN WGEID, a Special Procedure under the UN Human Rights Council tasked “to assist families in determining the fate or whereabouts of their family members who are reportedly disappeared.” The UN WGEID is currently holding a session in Bangkok, Thailand.
The families of Jonas Burgos, Dexter Capuyan, Gene Roz Jamil de Jesus and Felix Salaveria, Jr. presented the cases of enforced disappearances of their loved ones, and provided concrete testaments on how justice remains elusive under the Marcos Jr. government.
“We express our sincerest appreciation to the members of the UN WGEID in expressing solidarity with us, families of victims of enforced disappearance. It is our hope that they shall continue extending their sympathy and solidarity, as we forward our cases to the Working Group and other channels in our search and pursuit of justice,” said Edita Burgos, mother of disappeared Jonas Burgos and vice chairperson of KARAPATAN.
While they welcome the arrest and detention of former president Rodrigo Duterte by the International Criminal Court, Desaparecidos and KARAPATAN said that the imprints of that administration have not been eradicated.
“Under the Marcos Jr. government, all is not well in the Philippines, and continuing crimes of enforced disappearances are the starkest examples why,” said KARAPATAN secretary general Cristina Palabay.
Since the Marcos Jr. administration took power in July 2022, there have been 18 desaparecidos in the Philippines, including Dexter Capuyan, Bazoo de Jesus, Felix Salaveria Jr., and James Jazmines. KARAPATAN also documented at least 30 who were abducted and surfaced dead or alive.
According to documentation by KARAPATAN, there have been 1,918 desaparecidos in the Philippines since the Marcos Sr. dictatorship.
Palabay also shared to the UN WGEID the experiences of families of desaparecidos since the 2012 enactment of the law criminalizing enforced disappearance, as well as the law against torture.
“We have noted that whenever we accompany families of victims of abduction to military camps and police stations to look for their loved ones and invoke provisions of the law, we are met with indifference, ignorance of the law, or worse, hostility. Most of the persons in authority that we address claim that they do not know anything about these laws, despite official statements from top officials that they are trained to follow them, and would require us and even the Philippine Commission on Human Rights to seek permission in conducting regular, independent, unannounced and unrestricted visits to or inspection of places of detention and confinement. It would take several days for them to even confirm if the person that we’re looking for is in their custody or not,” recounted Palabay.
“We implore the working group to provide opinions on the individual complaints filed by the families of the disappeared, even as we ask the working group to make representations to the Philippine government to surface all the disappeared, to address the root causes of, and prevent enforced disappearances, and to simply muster the political will to put a stop to enforced disappearances,” concluded Palabay.