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Enforced or Involuntary Disappeared vs. other disappearances

Although the definition of enforced disappearance separates this crime from other types of disappearances, misunderstandings and misinterpretations are common. A few other cases of disappearances are:

Missing persons: Whereabouts are unknown to the victim's family, but there is no political cause and authorities are not made responsible. The great difference is that in this case, relatives can usually rely on the support and assistance of the authorities.
Incognito detention: The government acknowledges holding persons as detainees but refuses to reveal their identity. As the denial is not complete, there may still be judicial control over the detention; the person cannot be considered as fully subtracted from the protection of the law.
Joining armed opposition groups: Joining armed opposition groups can be a reason to disappear constituting a voluntary disappearance.
Forced recruitment: A forced and denied recruitment into a government army service or state supported militia is an enforced disappearance. Opposition groups recruiting forcefully constitutes kidnapping or criminal abductions.
Extraordinary renditions: Abduction of persons accused of involvement in terrorist activities abroad. This practice is executed by the United States security service. Detainees are brought to other countries where they are interrogated and often tortured. The elements of abduction, denying of information on whereabouts of that person and complicity of the United States and other governments services make these cases into full-fledged enforced disappearance cases.
Kidnapping: This type of criminal activity does not include a refusal from the state to acknowledge that the person has been deprived of liberty, which makes it substantially different to an enforced disappearance.
Criminal Abductions: Many cases are known of women and children being abducted by criminal groups for the purpose of being exploited in different ways. These cases can only be considered disappearances if the involvement of the State is proven.
Extrajudicial execution: Deliberate and unlawful killing carried out by a government or with acquiescence. As long as relatives of victims do not know with certainty that their loved ones have been extra-judicially killed and their fate and whereabouts remain unknown, the violation is considered a disappearance.

Offenders

The people carrying out a disappearance wish to remain unknown themselves. The disappearance itself is a secretive affair. According to most constitutions, disappearances are implicitly or explicitly forbidden. Perpetrators will therefore do all they can not to be held responsible. Their reasoning implies that as long as the prisoner, the body and consequently, the victim is not found, there can be no offender.

Once the government has chosen to apply the tactics of disappearance, it usually plans this with the secret service. Subsequently, it delegates orders for concrete action through various channels. Dependent on the situation in which the disappearances take place they are carried out by the military, the death squads, the paramilitary which don't even exist officially, civilian patrols and police. Governments give these groups a large freedom to act. Disappearances have a structure of central planning and decentralized execution.

Secrecy

Secrecy is a keyword in disappearances. This secrecy can be produced in various ways. In some cases a military unit of various cells is established. Each cell has a large degree of autonomy to take individuals into custody, make them disappeared and kill them. in other cases, disappearances are carried out by paramilitary groups and death squads. They have no official status but are granted far-reaching authority which enables them to do as they please without punishment.

Reasons

The main objective of a disappearance is to punish those who cause the state trouble, but against whom the state is not able or wish to take legal measures. Arguments of governments to make use of disappearances are:

Confusion: As opposed to legal proceedings the government can claim that groups beyond its control or persons who wish to discredit the state are responsible.
Intimidation: The government can spread fear by disclosing death lists with the names of future victims. Thus families are informed that the same many happen to them if they dare to stand up against the authorities.
Elimination: A disappearance is an effective way of removing people considered threatening by the State.
Instrument against international pressure: Governments are more easily addressed with regard to political prisoners than with regard to disappearance persons.

Excuses

In order to obscure the truth, authorities involved blame others, such as death squads, guerrilla fighters or resistance movements. Resistance movements are often blamed for a disappearance. In most cases this is not more than an excuse, but not always the case.

If governments are addressed by the international community with regard to disappearances, usually their reply is that the person had fled the country of even that the names of the disappeared were made up. If the person is dead, this is accounted for by means of the excuse that the person in question has committed suicide or got shot while trying to flee at his arrest.