This is an important step towards combating enforced disappearances and securing truth and justice for victims, including family members, it said in a statement released Monday.

The decision came shortly before the 13th anniversary of the enforced disappearance of human rights lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit, who was abducted in Bangkok on this day in 2004.

Amnesty International urged authorities to avoid further delays in ratifying the treaty and to ensure that its obligations to prevent and protect against disappearances become a

domestic reality.

“Authorities should enact legislation establishing acts of enforced disappearance as a specific crime, repeal legal provisions that facilitate incommunicado detention without charge or trial in unofficial places of detention, and establish adequate safeguards against disappearances for detained individuals,” it said.

“The high number of unresolved cases of disappearance in Thailand are a lasting scar on the country’s legacy. The suffering of families who have been living with the devastating consequences of enforced disappearance has been compounded by the denial of the truth about their relative’s fate and whereabouts and the state’s failure to bring perpetrators to justice.”

The statement said authorities should act swiftly to remedy this “continuing injustice, reveal the truth about these cases, and hold those responsible to account”.

The UN Human Rights Committee will review Thailand’s compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights today and tomorow.

Amnesty International and other civil society partners, both Thai and international, have submitted reports to the committee recommending that Thailand ratify the ICPPED and pass legislation criminalising torture and enforced disappearances.