COLOMBIA + 2O, EL ESPECTADOR, August 30, 2025
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Volunteer Translator)
On this Saturday, August 30, we commemorate International Victims of Forced Disappearance Day. In Colombia there have been registered 132,877 persons believed to have disappeared because of the armed conflict. The Red Cross (CICR in Spanish) has documented more than 2,000 cases after the signing of the Peace Agreement between the government and the FARC.
In this country, there are more than 100,000 absences. More than 100,000 families that live every day in a suspended mourning. More than 100,000 chairs remaining empty around the tables in the houses.
More than 100,000 brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, fathers and mothers that didn’t come home to celebrate the birthday parties, or the Christmas dances. In this country there are more than 100,000 souls that didn’t come back to embrace or be embraced.
The scourge of forced disappearance continues to be a throbbing reality in this country. Every year this lamentable statistic is updated, and more families are added to those who are waiting endlessly to find an answer: where are the loved ones who left one day and never came back?
The Unit for the Search for Persons Believed to Have Disappeared (UBPD in Spanish) updated the Universe of victims of forced disappearance before December 1 in events related to the armed conflict in this country.
After reviewing 21 data bases of entities like the National Institute for Legal Medicine, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, and the Victims Unit, the UBPD went from having 126,895 to 132,877 disappeared persons. That means that there was a significant increase of 5,982 new cases of search applications.
Add to that the most recent report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (CICR in Spanish) which documents the cases of forced disappearance arising after the Peace Agreement. Between December 1, 2016, and July 31, 2025, the CICR documented 2,144 victims of disappearance.
Even though the statistics permit measuring the phenomenon at a medium scale, the data on forced disappearance is under-reported and the stories allow us to measure the pain.
Colombia + 20 joins the commemoration of International Victims of Forced Disappearance Day through the stories told about this scourge and of their families’ pain.
Returning home: the story of a disappeared body that found its family
In this country’s cemeteries, there are completely identified bodies that still have not been able to find their families. The UBPD calls out for the delivery of information about lost loved ones to make a reunion possible. Here is the story of a search in reverse.
Collective case 82: the struggle by the families of eight students who disappeared
The families of the young people who were disappeared in 1982 at the hands of Police F2 agents were able to have the National University award them their symbolic and honorific degrees. The collective ceremony took place on April 17.
A dream “helped” an ex-FARC and the UBPD find James Silva, disappeared for 22 years
The family of James Silva Duque received the body of their loved one in a dignified delivery. The search strategy between the UBPD and the Reunions Corporation, which is made up of signers of the Peace Agreement, allowed them to find him in the mountains of San Juanito in Villlavicencio in Meta Department.
The testimony of a grandson who was stolen in the dictatorship and found by the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo
Manuel Gonçalves was abducted by the military in 1976 in Argentina after the murders of his parents. On International Victims of Forced Disappearance Day, Manuel remembers the pathway to recovering his true identity, his home, and his history.
How do you search for a disappeared person?
In Colombia there are at least three official entities to search for a disappeared person: the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Unit for the Search for Persons Believed to Have Disappeared (UBPD), and the Attorney General’s Office. There are also civil society collectives that support the searches, such as Women Walking for the Truth, Foundation Until We Find Them, and the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation.
Families can also search the data bases of hospitals and Legal Medicine. In addition, you can review the sites where you think was the last place they had been and talk with people who might have information to find some place they were and were last seen. And, most important, file a complaint with the authorities who are required to put search mechanisms into place urgently.
Family members of disappeared persons have the right to know what happened to their loved ones, and where they are. The authorities have the responsibility to find disappeared persons and those who are guilty of their disappearance.
In addition to the above-mentioned entities, you can locate the report in several places, such as:
- National Institute for Legal Medicine and Forensic Science, also known as Legal Medicine;
- Municipal clerks;
- Ombudsman’s Office;
- Commission for the Search for Disappeared Persons;
- Association of Families of Detainees Who Have Disappeared (ASFADDES IN SPANISH)
- Attorney General’s Office
Judicial Police, which includes CTI (Technical Investigation Corps, part of the Attorney General’s Office) and the Sijín (Judicial Investigation Section), part of Colombia’s National Police.
There is also a report in SIRDEC,[1] and from that portal it’s possible to follow up the procedure on the page of Public Consultation on Disappeared and Cadavers. However, if it’s someone who disappeared before December 2016 in the context of the armed conflict, that would be an extrajudicial and humanitarian system in the Unit for the Search for Persons Believed to have Disappeared that would receive the information to find the person.
[1] SIRDEC is an information portal of the Office of Legal Medicine and Forensic Science