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This article analyzes international instruments on political disappearances. The Nazi regime was probably the first to practice forced disappearances of persons to eliminate its victims without a trace. In the 1960's, the Guatemalan security forces began to use forced disappearances as part of their counter-insurgency campaign, a tactic replicated in the 1970's and 1980's by military regimes throughout Latin America. Now, however, it is governments in Asia, including Iraq and Sri Lanka that hold the record for disappearing their citizens. For the most part, those disappeared have been political opponents and members of grass-roots organizations. Disappearances are perhaps the cruelest form of government abuse, causing agony not only to the detainees but to their relatives as well. Detainees are cut off from the outside world, deprived of any legal protection, and subject to the whim of their captors. Most often they are tortured and then secretly killed. The relatives of detainees, meanwhile, are unable to ascertain their fate-whether and where they are being held, whether they are even dead or alive.