In mid-November 2015, two mass graves were discovered in the northwest of Iraq. They were believed to hold the remains of Yazidis executed by Islamic State. One grave contained 70 elderly women while 60 younger women and children were found in the other. The larger grave is one of the largest ever found in the area.

The Yazidis or Yezidis are a Kurdish-speaking people who live principally in northern Iraq. They number from 500,000 to 600,000, with another 200,000 settled in other parts of the world. Their 4,000-year-old faith draws upon Zoroastrianism, Islam and other religions: this unique heritage, however, has long made the Yazidis victims of persecution in the region, where they are…

By Bojana Djokanovic

ICMP was invited to participate and share expertise at a film screening and discussion organized in Washington on 8 December by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The event focused on the use of DNA in identifying migration-related enforced disappearances. The film shown was a documentary on the trafficking of migrant children from South America, “The Living Disappeared” directed by Alexa Barrett.  ICMP Forensic Sciences Director Thomas Parsons was a member of the discussion panel after the film screening.

“The Living Disappeared” gives a first-hand account of trafficking, from people who migrated as children, who were victims of kidnappers or smugglers, and who made the journey across the desert. It depicts the human side of the complex problem of identifying the dead and preventing human trafficking.

The film also describes the push factors within countries of origin that cause…

By Kathryne Bomberger

On 18 November El Salvador became the sixth country to sign the Agreement on the Status and Functions of the International Commission on Missing Persons. ICMP is the only international organization exclusively dedicated to helping governments and others account for those who go missing as a result of conflict, crime, migration, human rights violations and natural disasters.

The ICMP Agreement gives signatories a role in ICMP’s development and strategy. In December 2014, it was signed by the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium and Luxembourg.

El Salvador’s accession will…

Microsoft and ICMP announced in November that Microsoft has donated US$474,791 in software to ICMP. This will allow ICMP to maintain and enhance its Integrated Database Management System (iDMS) software and add efficiency to its global communications.

This is the fifth major donation by Microsoft to ICMP. It donated software in 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2015 under its global “Unlimited Potential” initiative, which provides software support to non-profit organizations.

“ICMP operates a state-of-the-art iDMS and runs programs in many different parts of the world,” said ICMP Director-General Kathryne Bomberger. “Microsoft’s assistance has been and continues to be of paramount importance to us as we develop our human identification database and expand our communications network to manage projects separated by large distances.”

The iDMS is a specialized software solution developed by ICMP for managing large scale missing persons programs. It has a set of powerful…

On 24 November, Her Majesty Queen Noor spoke at the Blavatnik School of Government in Oxford, describing the creation and evolution of ICMP and the development of a new international consensus on how to deal with the global challenge of missing persons.

Queen Noor, who has been an ICMP Commissioner since 2001, noted that there ae now effective tools to address the global missing persons crisis created by natural disasters, conflict and migration. The processes and capacities developed by ICMP over the years are being applied throughout the world, from Iraq to Chile to Canada.

For a long time, accounting for people missing during conflict was treated under the Geneva Conventions, which require warring parties to record the identity of the dead and wounded and to share this information with enemy forces, but the nature of war has changed in the last 150 years,…