The women left behind by disappearance

When a man is taken, the person who spends the next decade searching is usually a woman. She files the petitions, visits the offices, raises the children, and keeps the family's story alive. The literature on enforced disappearance calls them the families. In practice, they are often the whole institution.

The work of searching

Amina Masood Janjua began looking for her husband, Masood, after he disappeared on a bus to Peshawar in 2005. Her search became Defence of Human Rights, one of Pakistan's first organised campaigns against enforced disappearance. That story is repeated, at smaller scale, in thousands of homes.

The legal and financial cost

A disappearance freezes a household. Bank accounts, inheritance and property can become impossible to manage without a death certificate or a court order. Children's documents depend on a parent who is not there. A woman may be treated as a widow by the community and as a wife by the law, with the disadvantages of both.

The emotional load

There is no funeral, and so no accepted way to grieve. Families describe years of hoping and years of being told to give up. The burden falls disproportionately on women, who are often the ones who keep going to the courts after everyone else has stopped.

What support looks like

Legal aid that understands inheritance and guardianship. Documentation that records the family's account in their own words. And a public record that says the name out loud, so that the waiting is not private.