강제실종방지협약의 이행감시절차와 한국의 이행

Abstract

On January 4, 2023, Republic of Korea acceded to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. With this accession, Korea is now a party to eight of nine core UN human rights treaties, excluding the International Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers.
 The Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance adopts various procedures to monitor the implementation and compliance of State Parties' obligations and establishes the Committee on Enforced Disappearances as the body to operate them. By acceding to the Convention, Korea is automatically subject to the Convention's procedures such as States Parties reports, urgent action, and country visits. In addition, the optional procedures of individual communication and inter-state communication are also available to Korea as it has declared its acceptance of the relevant provisions. As Korea is already subject to similar implementation monitoring procedures to the Convention, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention Against Torture, and the Working Group on Enforced Disappearances, there are actually no additional sovereignty constraints or obligations that would be added by Korea’s accession to the Convention. For now, the Convention requires the submission of a national report by February 3, 2025, and while there is a need to align domestic legislation with the Convention's standards and reflect this in the national report, the Convention is a single reporting system, meaning that once the first national report is completed, the burden of reporting will be lessened in subsequent years.
 Withe the accession to the Convention, Korea has ratified or acceded to most of the UN human rights treaties, further solidifying its position as a key member of the UN human rights treaty system. Unfortunately, the Convention is limited in its universal application due to the slow pace of ratification and non-recognition of individual communication and inter-state communication. In this respect, Korea's accession is significant in terms of the spread and development of the Convention. Korea is the only country in the Asia-Pacific region that has accepted individual communication and inter-state communication at the same time as it accessed the Convention, which confirms its commitment to human rights protection and its participation in the international human rights protection system.