ABSTRACT
The chapter explores the genesis of the norms that came to shape the global discourse on the disappeared, showing how differences between the legal frameworks of the United Nations rooted in International Human Rights Law (IHRL) and those of the ICRC rooted in International Humanitarian Law (IHL) shaped the conception of the problem and led to a fragmentation among the Lebanese communitas later on. The chapter shows how the communitas adopted these international norms in their demands for an exit from liminality, most notably the “Right to Know.” In the second section, the authorargues that these norms further enshrined the focus on victimhood and how an “apparatus” of the disappeared penetrated the local context in Lebanon, a context that came to be diagnosed as having failed to build peace. Finally, it points toward the depoliticizing effects of these norms and the function carried by depoliticization, namely, an access to policy and communication channel with the state.
