The ICAED is promoting the early ratification and effective implementation of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 20, 2006.

[2] The ICAED was founded officially in September 2007 during a side event to the Human Rights Council session in Geneva.

The Latin American federation of family member organisations FEDEFAM debated the possible project of a convention already in their 1982 congress in Lima.

In that same year several eminent lawyers, such as Eduardo Novoa Monreal of Chile and Alfredo Galletti of Argentina, drafted the first text for a Convention against enforced disappearances.

During the negotiations for the convention from 2001 to 2003 in Geneva in the 'Open ended working group to draft a legally binding instrument for the protection of all persons from enforced disappearance' family members of disappeared from all continents and international human rights NGOs such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, International Commission of Jurists and FIDH cooperated on an ad hoc basis to convince UN member States to adopt the strongest possible text.