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…
