ICMP’s January newsletter reported on an initiative designed to promote dialogue on the missing persons process in the Western Balkans and the role of families in this process. Activities included innovative workshops that explored ways of articulating, sharing and coming to terms with key issues. Objectives included building empathy between young people and older family members through personal narratives; helping participants to understand how the missing persons issue affects different generations in different ways; encouraging older family members to identify positive forces that can help take the missing persons process forward; and fostering dialogue between young people and older family members.

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The February issue examined gender roles in conflict, starting out with the observation that in order to achieve lasting peace, it is imperative that women become active participants in decision-making. The experiences of women in dealing with war – and…

One year after the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden and Luxembourg signed the Agreement on the Status and Functions of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), three more countries – Cyprus, Chile and Serbia – signed the Treaty in December 2015. El Salvador had become a signatory in November.

The Agreement recognizes ICMP as an international organization tasked with assisting countries in their efforts to address missing persons cases from conflict, human rights abuses, disasters, organized crime, migration and other causes.

By becoming signatories, countries declare their commitment to dealing with the issue of missing persons, and this…

By Kathryne Bomberger,

Two events in the first half of December helped to put the issue of missing persons back at the top of the policy agenda in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The first was a call by families of the missing, through the Regional Coordination of associations of families of Missing Persons, meeting in Sarajevo, for the authorities to maintain their support for the process of reviewing unidentified remains stored in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s mortuaries.

Everyone present at the meeting, including 16 of the most active BIH associations of families of the missing, prosecutors from all levels in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Missing Persons Institute (MPI) Board of Directors, agreed that the issue of possible misidentifications made prior to the introduction of DNA testing must be addressed through mass collection of reference samples. The next step, which also had unanimous support, is to develop…

By Kevin Sullivan

When the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) visited Peru in the middle of 2015, WEIGD Chief Ariel Dulitzky noted that – at the current rate of location and identification of missing persons – it would take more than 100 years to account for all of the individuals still missing from the civil conflict of the 1980s and 1990s. Of 15,000 victims of enforced disappearance, around 1,300 have so far been accounted for.

According to a number of studies, in the war between Government security forces and left wing rebels (principally Shining Path and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement) the armed forces were responsible for most of the illegal detentions and killings, with disappearances being used as a matter of policy at the height of the insurgency. However, only a handful of military officers have…

Bojana Djokanovic considers the rising number of reported enforced disappearances in Egypt

Following the events that accompanied the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at the beginning of 2011, and the military overthrow of  President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, there have been continuous allegations by activists inside and outside Egypt that the regime of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is responsible for a rising tide of enforced disappearances and human rights violations – to the extent that the government would appear to be using enforced disappearance as an instrument of policy.

During the 2011 revolution, 1,200 persons were reported missing. In January 2013 a committee set up by President Morsi to investigate the 2011 events presented an 800-page report detailing multiple incidents including cases where citizens were detained by the armed forces and subsequently buried in unmarked graves.

Human Rights Watch reported in…