The Hague, 29 December 2022: A Vietnamese citizen who continues to play a key role in US-Vietnam relations, in particular supporting reconciliation and healing after the war, Thao Griffiths has accepted an invitation to become a Commissioner of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). Ms. Griffiths will take up this position immediately.

“We are delighted that Thao Griffiths will join the Board,” ICMP Chair Thomas Miller said today. “She has extensive corporate and diplomatic experience and will make an invaluable contribution to ICMP’s efforts to help governments, including governments in Asia, address the issue of persons who have gone missing as a result of conflict, political instability, natural disasters and other causes.”

Since December 2021, Ms. Griffiths, has been Meta’s Public Policy Head for Vietnam. Before that, she served for nearly a decade as Country Director of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, working at the organization’s Hanoi and Washington…

The Hague, 2 December 2022 – The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) has completed the second phase of a campaign to collect DNA reference samples from Syrian families living in Europe. The most recent campaign took place in Germany and the Netherlands between October and November 2022.

ICMP has collected data and received reports from more than 68,000 families representing more than 25,000 missing persons.  This data has been obtained voluntarily through reports to ICMP’s Online Inquiry Center (OIC) or through efforts to collect data directly from families of the missing with support from Syrian civil society organizations that work with ICMP.

The data collected includes information on where and when missing persons were last seen, and information about the circumstances of disappearance, including possible perpetrators. ICMP also collects genetic reference samples from families of the missing.  To date, ICMP has collected samples from 506 families of the missing living in…