Monthly Archives: October 2017

ICMP & Civil Society Organizations in Iraq Explore Missing Persons Strategies

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Erbil, 25 October 2017: The Iraq Program of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) organized a workshop today for civil society organizations that are working with ICMP to address the issue of missing persons in Iraq.

The workshop was held in Erbil and included participating organizations from Federal Iraq and the Kurdistan Region. The objective of the one-day event was to strengthen a network of civil society organizations to share information and work on missing persons campaigns and advocacy.

“We hope to grow this partnership and strengthen the ties among organizations concerned with the rights of families,” said Lena Larsson, the Head of ICMP’s Iraq Program. “We hope that after today, each of us will be able to leave with renewed energy to work for truth and justice for the many missing in Iraq.”

As many as one million people may have gone missing in Iraq as a result of political…

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ICMP’s New Headquarters and Laboratory Deliver Effective Responses to a Global Challenge

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The Hague: 24 October 2017: The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) is at the forefront of a global effort to address the issue of missing persons, ICMP Director-General Kathryne Bomberger said today at the opening of a state-of-the-art DNA laboratory at ICMP’s new Headquarters in The Hague.

ICMP’s laboratory system focuses exclusively on missing persons identification and utilizes Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), a technique that is expected to deliver an exponential increase in the power of DNA identification.

“Countries must tackle the issue of missing persons in a coordinated and systematic way that respects the rights of families of the missing – and this is what ICMP can help them do,” said Ms. Bomberger.  ICMP has forged new relationships with governments and other partners around the world since it assumed the status of a treaty-based intergovernmental organization in 2015, she added.

Former Norwegian Foreign Minister Knut Vollebaek, representing the ICMP Board…

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QIAGEN and ICMP launch next-generation DNA testing solutions for identifying missing persons

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The Hague, 24 October 2017: The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) today announced the launch of a cutting-edge next-generation sequencing (NGS) workflow created in collaboration with QIAGEN N.V. for ICMP’s missing persons DNA identification laboratory in The Hague, the Netherlands. The solution integrates QIAGEN’s GeneReader NGS System and spans all aspects of the DNA laboratory workflow, from sample extraction through final analysis, thereby creating a unique “sample to insight” user experience. The workflow includes automated QIAGEN instruments and consumables for DNA extraction, liquid handling, quantification, sample preparation and next generation, Massively Parallel Sequencing (MPS).

 

“QIAGEN’s support for ICMP is…

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From Stockholm to Syria: Different Circumstances, Shared Experience of “Ambiguous Loss”

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Muhanad Abulhusn is from the predominantly Druze city of As-Suwayda in southern Syria. He and his brother were detained incommunicado for extended periods by the Syrian regime. Ingrid Gudmundsson is a retired Mathematics teacher from Akersberga outside Stockholm. Her daughter and grand-daughter, and her former husband went missing in Thailand as a result of the December 2004 tsunami. Muhanad and Ingrid’s experiences overlap even though the circumstances in which they encountered the worldwide phenomenon of missing persons are entirely different.

This diversity of circumstances in which people go missing is reflected in ICMP’s mandate, which is to secure the cooperation of governments and others in locating and identifying missing persons from conflict, human rights abuses, disasters, organized crime, irregular migration and other causes. People whose loved ones go missing are confronted by different challenges. For example, when persons go missing in a natural disaster, relatives may suffer the “ambiguous loss”…

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EU Maintains Support for ICMP, Helps Bosnia and Herzegovina Find Missing Persons

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Sarajevo, 19 October: The European Union has granted three million euros to the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) under the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) 2016, for a two-year project to continue helping the Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) authorities to locate and identify the estimated 7,000 persons who are still missing from the 1992-95 conflict.

Under the EU-funded project, ICMP, a treaty-based International organization headquartered in The Hague, will continue to help the authorities in BIH address the interrelated issues of unidentified remains held in BiH mortuaries and misidentifications that occurred before ICMP introduced DNA testing in 2001. ICMP will maintain Forensic Anthropology and Archaeology activities and will continue to deliver DNA matching and identification. It will also seek to ensure increased use of its Online Inquiry Center (OIC) by individuals and organizations in BiH.

“Previous EU funds have been a significant…

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