The Hague, 25 November 2022: Accounting for missing persons, including victims of enforced disappearance is an integral part of the global effort to end violence against women and uphold fundamental human rights, the Director-General of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), Kathryne Bomberger, said today. Ms Bomberger was speaking on the occasion of International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which marks the start of “16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence”, a UN-mandated global campaign that leads up to Human Rights Day on 10 December.
“In conflict, most of those who go missing are men, which means that women survivors have to address legal, social, and political challenges, often in the face of deeply-entrenched prejudice,” Ms Bomberger said. “At the same time, women are specifically targeted by people-traffickers, and experience discrimination in other missing persons contexts: for example, in the West, disappearances of women of color, women…