The Hague, 30 August 2022: The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) is preparing to launch a major program in Ukraine. ICMP will work with government institutions and with families of the missing and civil society organizations to help the authorities develop a process that will make it possible to locate missing persons and reunite them with their families and also to identify human remains from mass and clandestine graves.

Ukrainian law and the international agreements that Ukraine has signed, including the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, which Ukraine ratified in 2015, uphold the rights of families of the missing.

These include the right to the truth about the fate and whereabouts of family members, the right to an effective and official investigation, the right to seek, receive and impart Information, the right to form associations and communicate with international organizations, the right to family…

His Majesty King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands has appointed Alexander Hug as an Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau. The award was presented to Mr. Hug, who is the head of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) Iraq Program, by Minister of Foreign Affairs Wopke Hoekstra, on 15 July 2022.

The appointment recognizes Mr. Hug’s actions after Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by a Russian BUK missile over eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014, killing all 298 passengers and crew.

Mr. Hug, who was at the time the Principal Deputy Chief Monitor of the Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), led the first team to reach the crash site, and negotiated access despite obstruction from armed men occupying the area. He and his team helped to secure the site, provided access to forensic investigators and facilitated the return of…