Like in many countries, in Pakistan, the obstacles come with paperwork. Amina Masood Janjua was an artist and a mother of three when her husband, Masood Janjua, boarded a bus on 30 July 2005 and never arrived at his destination.

“When the child is of the age of 18 years, he or she gets the national identification card, and that is not made when the father is not there,” Amina said. “If they want to get a passport, they can’t. And the inheritance issue is that you have to declare that your father has died. So, nobody is ready to give a death certificate to somebody who has disappeared by the hands of the authorities.”

Talia Khan Khattak, a UN Human Rights staff member, had an exam the next morning when her father, Idris Khattak — a researcher who had spent years documenting disappearances in Pakistan — was himself disappeared in November 2019. He was held in an unknown location for more than two years.

“I was not an orphan, but no form had a box marked ‘disappeared.’ Profession? What could I write — ‘retired’? I have checked that box many times, and every time wished it were true,” Khan Khattak said.

“Legally, he was neither with us nor gone,” she added. “And so, neither were we.”

Mexico, with more than 130,000 disappeared persons, has tried to legislate that limbo.

“The declaration of absence keeps the rights of the disappeared person intact. That is, they are not dead, they are disappeared,” Cartagena López explained. “At the beginning, the only option was the presumption of death, and that meant, from the outset, accepting that they were dead. One of the basic principles is to search for them alive. And they are alive, literally, until we are shown otherwise.”

What the Convention gives, and what it owes

Dabo said that progress was real — stronger legal protection, national reforms, international cooperation — but set a single test for it.

“Our response must therefore be shaped and pursued with victims, survivors and families, and not merely on their behalf,” she said.

Four women, different relationships to the treaty. Thailand ratified it. Mexico ratified it and received a Committee visit in 2021. Pakistan has neither signed nor ratified.

“If you ask what’s the name of the victims of enforced disappearance in Thailand, everybody will say we don’t know, because they never documented the cases,” Neelapaijit said. “But when we submit the cases to the UN, at least our name is on the record. It’s really meaningful, even though nobody believes that the victims disappear, at least there is a record of victims.”

For Cartagena López, a record is no longer enough.

“We are tired of being listened to. Everybody listens now — but we never get to the other side,” she said. “What we want is for the Convention to be a tool that lets us demand, that lets us push, that gets us better investigations, that gets us searches, but above all, that lets us find them.”

Amina has not even that to lean on.

“Masood has been missing for 21 years. I don’t know if he will ever come home. But I know that if this Convention had bound my country in 2006, the search of thousands of Pakistani families would not have been fought so completely alone,” Amina said.

Nobody gives up here

Cartagena López’s collective has a motto: aquí nadie se rinde — nobody gives up here.

“It has a lot to do with those politicians who say, ‘I’ve had enough’. Well, we don’t get tired,” she said. “We are stubborn for memory, stubborn about not forgetting, stubborn about searching for them. And of course, stubborn about finding them.”

Neelapaijit now works with women who have just lost a husband and don’t know where to begin.

“Instead of asking the victims, civil society or people should support them by raising our voices and asking on behalf of us, asking the government, asking State officers,” she said.

What held Amina wasn’t an institution.

“When I landed into something very imperfect and unjust, the artist within me actually died. Years later, with mighty effort, I started painting and sketching again,” she recalled. “It’s a big catharsis really. Similarly with poetry — now when I write, I cry. I cry a lot. And that was what was missing, because I was not crying.”

A phone call by Khan Khattak closed the circle between the two Pakistani women.

“One night at three in the morning, I was convinced that speaking up about my father had made things worse for him,” she said. “I called Amina aunty. I cried on the phone. She comforted me and reminded me I was not alone. I genuinely believe she saved my life that night. No institution gave me that. Another family did.”

“We have to create a network,” Khan Khattak added. “Connect families, survivors, and those who inherit this reality with no instructions. A network you can go to when your heart is breaking at 3am.”

That network is what “We Are Still Here” hopes to grow. The name of the initiative is borrowed from Walter Salles’ film “I’m Still Here” and the story of Eunice Paiva, who waited 25 years for her husband’s death certificate following up his enforced disappearance under Brazil’s dictatorship and became a lawyer in the meantime.

The “we”, Dolci said, “is first the sum of the many ‘I’s” — the families — but can widen to take in States, businesses, universities, anyone willing to change how an institution treats a family that is still waiting. The first project meeting took place the day after the launch event.

“To all the victims and families who are still searching, still demanding truth and justice: we are still here, and we will remain at your side,” Albán said.