ICMP is organizing a major international panel discussion on missing persons from 14.00 to 16.00 on Friday 8 July 2016 at the Theater aan het Spui, Foyer Spui 187, 2511 BN, The Hague, the Netherlands. The conference can be followed via livestream at icmp.int/livestream/
1 July 2016: The successful operation carried out this week by Italian naval engineers to raise the wreckage of a vessel that sank in April last year off the coast of Libya with the loss of hundreds of lives, highlights the urgent need for a coherent international response to the issue of missing persons from the refugee crisis, ICMP Director-General Kathryne Bomberger said today.
“The Italian authorities have responded to the crisis in a commendable and forthright way, allocating resources to maritime safety and launching initiatives to account for missing migrants, but the scale of the loss of life in the case of this vessel highlights in the most tragic and brutal way the fact that more must be done by the International Community as a whole,” Bomberger said.
The ship is estimated to have been carrying anywhere from 700 to 1,000 refugees, and…