Displacement, Torture, and Disappearances

Crimes of the State | Week 4, Lecture 7

Professor Julian E. Gerez

April 20, 2026

Roadmap: Displacement, torture, and disappearances

Last time:
- Discussion of genocide and mass killings
- Moses’s critique: permanent security
- Valentino’s strategic perspective
- Any questions from last week?
Today:
- Final project group time (~25 min)
- Forced displacement
- Torture
- Enforced disappearances
- Take care of yourself!

Final project reminders

In groups of \(\leq\) 5, you will produce a policy brief
- In the style of a professional human rights organization
  - (e.g., Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International)
- …on a human rights situation or security crisis not already covered in class
In your brief, you will:
- Analyze the situation
- Explain how it developed
- Assess what has been done to address it
- Recommend concrete steps for governments, international organizations, or other actors
In Part II of the class we’re covering different types of crimes of the state:
- Genocide and mass killings, forced displacement, disappearances, torture
- …policing, carceral violence, and forced labor, gender-based crimes
Proposal due this Friday at midnight
- Make sure you have a group and an idea of what you want to study

Final project discussion time

If you already have a group:
- Meet with your group
- Discuss what you want to study
If you do not have a group and filled out form:
- Check your email, you were assigned one
- Find your group number from your email
- Go to that part of the room
If you did not fill out the form:
- Find a group with less than 5 people
Please allow people to join your group! Be kind :-)
We will take about 25 minutes on this
We will be walking around the room to help

Forced displacement

Displacement as a strategy

Valentino: mass killing is not always the first or main goal, sometimes it is removal
- E.g., settler colonialism, counterguerrilla warfare, radical communization
- Mass killing may result as an unintended consequence or be used as final attempt
Forced displacement: civilian migration provoked, directly or indirectly, by armed actors
- Cleansing: permanent and collective expulsion of particular groups (ethnic or political)
- Depopulation: indiscriminate and temporary emptying of an area
- Forced relocation: concentration of civilians in camps or other controlled zones
  - Used to sort populations; could be precursor to mass killing, though not always

National Park Service map showing the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, including land, water, and major routes. — Routes of the Indian Removal Act, 1830s

Who are the displaced?

Refugee: crosses an international border to seek safety
Internally displaced person (IDP): forced to flee but remains within their country’s borders

UNHCR infographic showing 122 million people forcibly displaced globally; Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, and Ukraine are the largest source countries

122 million people are currently displaced worldwide; about 60% are IDPs (UNHCR)
- Many states have liberal formal policies toward displaced people but restrictive practices
- E.g., document denials, movement or aid restrictions to deter arrival or encourage return

Manifest Destiny: displacement in practice

“Free” land attracted European settlers westward
- Indigenous peoples already occupied that land
This required clearing Indigenous populations
- Broken treaties, forced marches, reservations
- Violence, but also legal and cultural erasure
Boarding schools: “kill the Indian, save the man”
- Changing language, religion, social structures
Lemkin: genocide and foundations of group life
- Physical removal and cultural elimination

John Gast's 1872 allegorical painting American Progress, depicting a floating female figure representing civilization moving westward while settlers, trains, and wagons follow behind her and Native Americans and bison flee before her — John Gast, *American Progress* (1872)

For discussion:

Does this fit the UNGC definition of genocide? What’s at stake in the difference?
What do you make of the painting’s framing? What does that framing reveal?

Torture

Is torture ever justified?

Punishment, the body, and the state

Pre-modern punishment: public spectacles aimed at the body
- E.g., executions, mutilation, public torture
- Demonstrates sovereign power visibly
  - \(\rightarrow\) The state’s authority made flesh
Modern shift: the state is stronger
- \(\rightarrow\) …so punishment can move behind closed doors
- Aimed at attempting to reform behavior
- Not (necessarily) destroying the body
- E.g., prisons, surveillance, discipline
Torture did not disappear, it changed justification
- Punishment to information extraction and deterrence
- …despite weak evidence it reliably produces either

A detailed woodcut illustration depicting the burning of martyrs at the stake. Illustration of a Panopticon: a central guard tower overlooking a circular prison with cells arranged around the perimeter.

The UN Convention Against Torture

Adopted by UN General Assembly 1984; entered into force 1987; 174 states parties as of 2024
UDHR: no one shall be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment

Article 1 — Definition… what stands out?

“…any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining information or a confession, punishment […] or intimidation or coercion […] when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in, or incidental to lawful sanctions…”

Severe pain or suffering, physical or psychological (difficult to legally prove in practice)
Intentional: not negligence or collateral harm
Purposive: information, punishment, coercion, or discrimination
Official: by state or public actors, or committed with tacit approval

Torture on the international agenda

International political pressure led to the adoption of the convention against torture
- Amnesty International’s campaigns for “prisoners of conscience” put torture on the map
- Sweden as a key state sponsor of the convention process
Unlike other crimes codified post-WWII, convention emerged from sustained NGO advocacy
- Why might torture have required outside pressure?

Article 2

“No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. […] An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.”

The prohibition is absolute unlike most rights… why do you think drafters insisted on this?
This makes torture distinctive in international human rights law
And yet: states routinely invoke security emergencies to justify “enhanced interrogation”

Why outside pressure? Lead with: every state tortures or might want to — unlike genocide, where states could credibly say “not us” after WWII, torture is tempting across regime types (democracies in counterinsurgency, policing, interrogation). States had a collective interest in not binding themselves tightly. Other angles if students go there: (1) Cold War made state initiative impossible — both blocs tortured, neither would lead a process indicting its own clients; (2) torture happens out of view, requires NGOs to surface it (sets up disappearances later); (3) victims (prisoners of conscience) have no domestic constituency by definition; (4) norms cutting against state interests typically need non-state actors — Keck and Sikkink, constructivist IR.

Why absolute? Lead with the historical/political answer: drafted in shadow of Latin American juntas, Greece, etc. — every torturing regime claimed national security necessity. Drafters had watched the “balancing” frame get exploited and closed the loophole entirely. Other angles: (2) Kantian — torture instrumentalizes a person completely, categorical wrong, ties to Langlois on dignity; (3) empirical — torture doesn’t reliably produce accurate info, ticking-bomb premise is weak; (4) slippery slope — narrow exceptions expand (US post-9/11 from “high-value detainees” to Abu Ghraib). Sets up Payne and Abouharb: absolute prohibition doesn’t eliminate the underlying incentive, it changes the form repression takes.

Enforced disappearances

What is an enforced disappearance?

Many victims of enforced disappearances were arbitrarily arrested or detained first
High risk of torture and other human rights violations such as sexual violence

UN Convention for the Protection of Persons from Enforced Disappearance (2006):

“…the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law.”

What stands out?

Deprivation of liberty against the person’s will
State involvement by agents, or with state acquiescence
Concealment refusal to acknowledge detention or reveal whereabouts

Why is disappearance a distinct crime?

Not just illegal detention: the state is in denial that it happened in the first place
- Impunity: harder to prosecute than documented detention or killing
Victim is placed entirely outside the protection of the law
- No judicial oversight; no access to lawyers or family
- Creates isolation: severs human rights defenders from their networks
Psychological torture: for the victim and for families left behind
Uncertainty is a deliberate instrument of terror (anyone could disappear!)

Women in white headscarves protest the disappearance of loved ones in Argentina's Plaza de Mayo — Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires

Black and white photograph of Chilean women holding signs reading '¿Dónde Están?' (Where are they?) with portraits of disappeared persons during the Pinochet dictatorship — Demonstrations in Chile during Pinochet regime

Timeline of legal recognition of enforced disappearance

1980s: UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances established

Collage depicting Operation Condor, the coordinated campaign of repression and disappearances carried out by Southern Cone military regimes in the 1970s and 1980s, featuring portraits of military leaders Pinochet, Videla, and Stroessner against a red map of South America. — Dictators Pinochet (Chile), Videla (Argentina), Stroessner (Paraguay), and Médici (Brazil) of Operation Condor (*The Guardian*)

1992: UN Declaration on Enforced Disappearance; convention in 2006
- Classified as a crime against humanity when widespread or systematic
- Not subject to a statute of limitations
- Gives families the right to seek truth and reparations
- Organizers and perpetrators held equally liable in court cases

How international law shapes state choices

States adapt their methods when constraints change
As states ratify the ICCPR, they face greater legal accountability for killings and torture
- Which are more visible and easily traced
Payne and Abouharb’s argument: states strategically substitute
- They shift toward enforced disappearances
- Disappearances achieve similar coercive goals
- …but are harder to document, attribute, and prosecute
This is a perverse effect of international human rights law
- The law does not necessarily eliminate the underlying incentive to repress
- In this case, it changed the form repression takes

For discussion: US immigration enforcement

Some argue that ICE actions are similar to disappearances:

Arrests without warrants
Agents operating without visible identification
Whereabouts often withheld, or delayed
Detainees moved through facilities without notice
- Relevant for contact with family, lawyers, doctors

Immigrations and customs enforcement officers in tactical gear, including face coverings, sunglasses, and plate carriers, stand in a line. — ICE agents in Los Angeles (*Los Angeles Times*)

For discussion:

Does this fit the legal definition? What elements are present or absent?
- How does intent play a role in your answer above?
Does it matter whether we call this “enforced disappearance” or something else?

Q1 — Does it fit? Walk through the three elements from prior slide: (1) deprivation of liberty — clearly present, ICE arrests are non-consensual; (2) state involvement — clearly present, ICE is the state, not a proxy; (3) concealment / refusal to acknowledge — this is the live question. Defenders point to: detainees moved across state lines without notice, families unable to locate loved ones for days/weeks, masked agents, slow/inaccurate locator system. Skeptics point to: detainees eventually processed through immigration court, habeas petitions formally available, ICE acknowledges that it detains even if not always whom or where. Land here: the Convention was written with Argentine-style total denial in mind (“we have no record of this person”). ICE represents a different form of concealment — bureaucratic opacity rather than outright denial. Reasonable people disagree on whether that fits.

Q2 — Intent? Two positions: (1) Intent matters — if ICE isn’t trying to hide people but is just slow/overburdened/poorly coordinated, calling it disappearance overstretches the concept. The Argentine junta deliberately destroyed records; bureaucratic dysfunction isn’t the same. (2) Effects matter — if the predictable result is that families can’t locate detainees and lawyers can’t file timely petitions, the function of disappearance is achieved. From the victim’s standpoint, the distinction between malicious and structural concealment doesn’t change the experience. Broader criminology parallel: do we judge state crimes by mens rea or structural outcomes? Same debate runs through corporate crime, environmental harm, policing. Land here: international law cares about both intent and pattern. Isolated bureaucratic failure isn’t disappearance; systematic failure the state knows about and doesn’t fix starts to look like disappearance even without explicit orders. Connect to Payne and Abouharb — their substitution argument suggests states strategically shift toward harder-to-document forms, blurring the line between intentional and structural concealment.

Q3 — Does the label matter? Two competing pulls: (1) Yes, labels do work. Calling something disappearance triggers Convention obligations (no statute of limitations, crimes against humanity if systematic, transnational accountability). It also frames the practice for the public and for international audiences. Refusing the label can be a way of protecting the state from scrutiny. (2) Labels can also distort. Overstretching “disappearance” risks diluting the term — if everything is disappearance, nothing is. Critics may say comparing ICE to Pinochet is hyperbolic and undermines the rhetorical force of the term when it’s most needed. Land here: this is exactly the politics-vs-criminology tension from Lecture 1. Politically, the label is a mobilizing tool. Analytically, the question is whether the practice meets the criteria — and that’s an empirical/conceptual question, not a rhetorical one. Social scientists should be willing to apply the label when warranted and willing to refuse it when not, regardless of which conclusion is politically convenient.

For Wednesday: policing and carceral violence

Today: forced displacement, torture, and enforced disappearances
- Distinct but related state strategies
Next lecture: policing and carceral violence
- How does Michelle Alexander’s argument connect to what we’ve discussed so far?
- Is mass incarceration a crime of the state?
Questions?

Read before Wednesday:

Alexander, Michelle. 2010. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The New Press. Chapter 1, 20–57.

(Available on Perusall via Canvas)

Reminder: policy brief proposal due this Friday at midnight!