2014 Tutu Fellow Aua Balde has been elected Chair-Rapporteur of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. She was appointed to the Group in November 2020 by the UN Human Rights Council.
Enforced disappearance has become a global problem and is not restricted to a specific region of the world. A disappearance has a doubly paralysing impact: on the victims, frequently tortured and in constant fear for their lives, and on their families, ignorant of the fate of their loved ones, their emotions alternating between hope and despair, wondering and waiting, sometimes for years, for news that may never come.