Monthly Archives: May 2021

Act in their Absence: New ICMP campaign encourages Syrians to report missing and disappeared persons

Filed under Press Releases

The Hague, 31 May 2021 – A new International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) campaign titled Act in their Absence  encourages Syrians to report missing persons to the ICMP’s Online Inquiry Center (OIC) as part of efforts to help find Syria’s missing. Families located anywhere in the world can use the OIC, and Europe-based Syrian families with missing relatives will this summer be invited to provide genetic reference samples to assist in locating missing persons and reuniting families.

The project activities are conducted by ICMP, with the support of the German Federal Foreign Office and the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.

Since the beginning of the Syrian conflict, more than 100,000 persons have gone missing, according to a 2021 UN report. Syrians and others have gone missing due to atrocities committed as part of the ongoing fighting, human rights violations, including summary executions, enforced disappearances, kidnapping, arbitrary detention…

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Survivors of Albania’s communist camps share stories in ICMP-supported documentary film

Filed under News

By Saša Kulukčija

Tirana, 17 May 2021 – Gjet Kadel was just seven years old when he and his family were imprisoned in Albania’s Tepelena camp. Decades later, he is still looking for the remains of family members who perished in the camp. His story is highlighted in The Weight of Mud, a documentary created by journalist Lulieta Progni of the Institute for Political Studies with support from the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP).

The documentary, created as part of a project financed by the European Union (EU) in Albania and the Government of Switzerland and implemented by ICMP and Authority for Information on Former State Security Documents (AIFSSD), was featured on ABC Albania and is now available on YouTube.

The film combines survivors’ stories with research and State Archive documents. About 600 people, 300 of them children, were killed or died due to inhuman conditions while imprisoned in Tepelena…

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On Iraq’s Mass Grave Day, ICMP calls for the protection and investigation of mass graves

Filed under Flash News News Press Releases

Baghdad, 16 May 2021 – To commemorate Mass Graves Day in Iraq, the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) in collaboration with Bournemouth University presented a recently published protocol on mass grave investigation and protection to Iraqi authorities involved in efforts to account for missing persons.

In 2007, the Iraqi Council of Ministers designated 16 May as the National Day of Mass Graves to draw attention to the fate of individuals who were killed and disappeared during decades of conflict and human rights abuse and buried in mass graves. Iraqi authorities estimate that between 250.000 and 1 million persons have gone missing in the country.

To commemorate Mass Graves Day, ICMP presented to Iraqi stakeholders Arabic- and Kurdish-language copies of The Bournemouth Protocol on Mass Grave Protection and Investigation, a joint product of ICMP and Bournemouth University that defines legal and practical standards of the protection and investigation of mass…

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Germany accedes to ICMP Treaty

Filed under News Press Releases

The Hague, 3 May 2021 – In a move that will deepen collaboration to benefit missing persons and their families around the world, Germany recently acceded to the Agreement on the Status and Functions of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), becoming the 2014 Treaty’s ninth State Party.

Germany joins Afghanistan, Chile, Cyprus, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Serbia, Sweden and the United Kingdom as States Parties to the Treaty, which has also been signed by Belgium and El Salvador.  The Treaty established ICMP as an intergovernmental organization  headquartered in The Hague tasked with ensuring the cooperation of governments and others in locating missing persons cases from conflict, human rights abuses, disasters, organized crime, migration and other involuntary causes.

Germany’s Ambassador to the Netherlands, Dirk Brengelmann, on 30 April formally deposited Germany’s instrument of accession to the depositary, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. The German government on 17…

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