Access to UN human rights mechanisms is open by design. That openness is a strength, and it should not be mistaken for endorsement. Every few weeks, a photograph appears on social media: a delegation, a conference room, a UN logo. The caption implies that an organisation has been received, recognised and, by extension, vindicated. It is worth being clear about what such a photograph shows—and what it does not.
The UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances is a humanitarian mechanism. According to the OHCHR’s own description, it receives, examines and transmits to governments reports of disappearances submitted by relatives or by human rights organisations acting on their behalf. The Working Group’s guidance for civil society states that NGOs routinely help families submit cases and can raise general allegations. Its procedures for country visits indicate that it seeks information from a broad range of stakeholders and that sources remain confidential unless they consent to disclosure.
None of this amounts to a credentialing system. The Working Group does not vet the political views or affiliations of those who approach it, and it should not have to. Its role is to transmit cases to governments and seek answers. A meeting with a special procedures mandate-holder indicates that a submission has been received or that information has been provided. It says nothing about the wider aims of whoever submitted it.
This matters because Balochistan is a place where the language of human rights and the language of armed struggle are increasingly tangled together, and where that tangle can serve competing political purposes.
What armed groups do
Consider what one armed group has done. In March 2025, the Balochistan Liberation Army hijacked the Jaffar Express, a passenger train travelling from Quetta to Peshawar. Reporting at the time described attackers wearing explosive vests and holding hundreds of people hostage, while Pakistani officials confirmed the deaths of hostages and soldiers. The casualty figures were contested, and the BLA’s own claims were considerably higher than the official figures. In its designation statement, the US State Department put the toll at 31 civilians and security personnel, with more than 300 passengers held hostage.
That designation, announced in August 2025, designated the BLA and its Majeed Brigade alias as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation, following the group’s earlier designation as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in 2019. The same statement referred to the group’s claimed suicide attacks near Karachi’s airport and the Gwadar Port Authority complex in 2024. Pakistan had already banned the Majeed Brigade in July 2024.
These are matters of public record, documented by governments and reported by international news organisations. They stand apart from any argument about who sits in which room in Geneva.
Two questions that should not be merged
The distinction I want to defend is simple. Whether a state has failed families who say their relatives were taken is one question. Whether a group accused of attacking or killing civilians deserves political sympathy is another. Pakistan’s critics and defenders alike do a disservice to the discussion when they collapse the two.
The disappearances issue is real, and the UN mechanism exists to address it. A government that is confident in its conduct should welcome scrutiny, answer individual cases and allow independent experts to do their work. Refusing to engage with the process only strengthens the impression that there is something to hide.
But a rights mechanism cannot serve as a laundering service. A group that treats a hijacked train as a bargaining chip cannot cite the UN’s humanitarian concern for missing people as proof of its own moral standing. Nor can a movement’s political or advocacy affiliates claim the immunity of neutral observers if the same ideological milieu celebrates or excuses attacks on civilians. The test is conduct and transparency, not access.
What follows
Three practical conclusions follow. First, states and UN bodies should keep special procedures open to all who wish to submit cases, because their value lies in that openness. Second, anyone who presents themselves as a human rights actor should be prepared to answer plain questions about funding, affiliations and their position on violence against civilians. Third, governments, including Pakistan’s, should answer the individual cases put to them rather than treating every submission as a hostile act.
Legitimacy is earned through what people do to others, not through which building they are photographed outside. The families of the missing deserve real answers. So do the families of those on the Jaffar Express. Neither group is served when a photograph in Geneva is used to stand in for a verdict.
