International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances – August 30, 2026 On August 30, 2026, the international community marks two decades since the adoption of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED). Twenty years on, the core message of this landmark convention remains painfully relevant: no person should disappear without a trace, and no family should be left without answers. Behind every missing name is a pe

On the morning of 19 August 2003, a truck bomb tore through the Canal Hotel in Baghdad — the United Nations headquarters in Iraq. Twenty-two people lost their lives in the attack, among them Sérgio Vieira de Mello, the UN Special Representative for Iraq, and more than a hundred others were injured. Most of them were humanitarians: aid workers who had chosen to stay and serve, even as the country burned around them. The United Nations General Assembly later designated 19 Augus