Heru Andriyanto – In the face of numerous unresolved human rights violations, the government has no justification to delay ratifying an international convention on protection from enforced disappearance, rights activists said on Thursday.

Mary Aileen Diez Bacalso, secretary general of the Philippine-based Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD), said Indonesia had promised three years ago to sign the convention.

"We'd like to say the Indonesian government has every reasons to ratify it," she said.

"Victims [of past violations] are still deprived of their rights to liberty and justice. The families of the victims of enforced disappearances still cry for justice – their loved ones are still nowhere to be found. And Indonesia is the current member of the UN Commission on Human Rights."

Bacalso was speaking in Jakarta at a discussion held to honor respected Indonesian rights campaigner, Munir Said Thalib, who was assassinated nearly five years ago.

Bacalso said Munir was a strong proponent of the convention, which later adopted the rights of victims' families to form associations, as was proposed by Munir, as a tribute to him after his death.

"Enforced disappearance is not just an issue in the past, it is a continuing phenomenon that happens on a daily basis," she said. "We want Indonesia to ratify it as soon as possible."

The convention will oblige governments to criminalise enforced disappearances and uphold the rights of families to know what happened to victims. This will apply to cases both past and present, Bacalso said.

The discussion was also attended by people who lost loved ones during the military's purge of suspected communists during the early years of Suharto's New Order regime in the 1960s and parents of students who went missing or were killed in clashes with security officers in Jakarta during the tumult of 1998 and 1999.

"The struggle for the convention started in Latin America but enforced disappearances are a global phenomenon; they are continuing crimes," said Ruth Lianos, a professor at Bolivia's Mayor de San Andres University whose husband was killed in 1981 by the country's then military regime.

She said six countries in Latin America had ratified the convention and two more would follow. "At this point, we have great concerns because the convention is not just for Latin America. We need to push Indonesia to become the second Asian country to ratify it," Lianos said.

Japan is the only Asian country to have ratified the convention, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2006. Despite receiving promises from 57 countries, only 13 countries have signed. It needs 20 signatories to come into force.