By Mariana Lersundy

Bogota, 30 March 2020: It was children’s play with a purpose. Guided by the Colombian non-governmental organization Association for the Integral Development of Victim, 40 children whose family members are missing used art and play to learn about a pre-colonial chieftain, human rights and disappearances. 

The project was supported by the International Commission on Missing Persons through its small grants program. In Colombia, ICMP has provided 20 civil society organizations with grants worth more than a total of 300,000 US dollars to facilitate the search, location and identification processes, and to support families with missing family members. 

For the children and youth taking part in the project in Pasto, southwestern Colombia, family life often revolves around the search for missing family members. The project brought them together to play, share experiences and learn. Organizers chose to focus…

The Hague, 9 March 2020 – ICMP Director-General Kathryne Bomberger has committed to ensuring that all ICMP global programs will promote female leadership and engagement. This effort, part of her 2020 International Gender Champion commitments, aims to support women whose relatives have gone missing, so that they can become strong human rights advocates and work to secure their rights.

“As an International Gender Champion, I will strive to reduce the plight of women survivors of atrocities.  Silence has long surrounded the issue of missing persons, likely because those left behind tend to be women and children, while most of those who go missing from war, human rights abuses, organized crime and irregular migration are men,” she said.

“Many women don’t report missing person cases out of fear of reprisals, and many may not be aware of their rights, including the right to a proper investigation.”

She noted that ICMP raises global…

The Hague, 6 March 2020: Representatives of civil society organizations involved in Syria learned about the missing persons process in a learning and development program organized by the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) through its newly launched ICMP Wim Kok Center of Excellence and Learning.

The new learning program uses a simulation exercise to teach scientists, judges, prosecutors, academics, families of the missing and civil society organizations about the process of locating and identifying missing persons, from reporting a missing person to locating a missing person.  The program also helps “first responders” learn about the importance of documenting the location of irregular gravesites.

Participants in the 27 February simulation exercise learned about each aspect of the missing persons process and the need for securing and centralizing relevant data so that missing persons can be found. The simulation underlined the importance of an integrated system that collects and shares relevant information.

First,…