A leading forensic scientist and a representative of families of the missing have delivered DNA samples to ICMP’s laboratory system in September, inaugurating a program through which ICMP will help the authorities in Brazil in their efforts to identify the remains of people who were victims of enforced disappearance almost half a century ago.

 A Man on a Mission to Help Families of the Missing

Dr. Samuel Ferreira, the Scientific Coordinator of Brazil’s Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances, calculates that in the last two years he has travelled roughly 44,000 kilometers in order to collect blood samples from family members of people who went missing during the 1964-1985 military dictatorship.

Dr Ferreira is the scientific coordinator of the Perus Working Group (PWG) which was established three years ago to identify bodies that were interred in a clandestine mass grave in the Dom Bosco Cemetery in Perus, Sao Paulo….

Bosnia and Herzegovina has done more than any other country to find and identify persons missing as a result of conflict. Of the 30,000 persons who were missing in 1995, more than 23,000 have been found – a ratio that has not been equaled anywhere in the world.

This unprecedented achievement has been possible through the support and cooperation of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). ICMP was established in 1996 initially to work with the countries of the former Yugoslavia to locate and identify persons missing from the conflicts of the 1990s.  ICMP assisted by bringing all the stakeholders from the region together – government authorities,  judicial bodies and technical experts, international organizations, families of the missing and others – to forge a common and effective strategy. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, these stakeholders have worked with the BIH Missing Persons Institute, which, for more than a decade has…

Under the watchful eye of Thomas Parsons, the International Commission on Missing Persons has become the global reference in forensic human identification. As the ICMP establishes its new headquarters in The Hague, it presents the opportunity to raise its expertise to the next level.

To the average passer-by, the entrance to the new ICMP headquarters is just another polished door on a pleasant main street in a quiet, neat Dutch city. It would be difficult to guess that the three-storey facility that lies behind will soon host a cutting-edge laboratory, working to bring solace and comfort to families that have lost loved ones through armed conflicts, disasters or migration.

A unique opportunity
On the third floor, ICMP Director-General Kathryne Bomberger sits at her desk in a quiet corner, watching the new offices take shape around her. She is quietly excited by the relocation. “The Hague is…

Ahead of the publication of ICMP’s Stocktaking Report on Croatia, Matthew Holliday offers a brief overview of technical efforts undertaken by the authorities in Croatia and ICMP to account for more than 6,000 persons missing at the end of the early 1990s conflict.

In December 2016, ICMP provided the latest set of DNA identification reports to the Croatian Government Commission on Detained and Missing Persons, bringing the number of missing from the Croatian conflict that have been identified through the exchange of anonymized DNA profiles between ICMP and the Commission to more than 600. This cooperation is crucial: more than twenty years after the conflict in Croatia, the issue of the missing – including fulfilling the right of families of the missing to truth and justice – remains a complicating factor in efforts to strengthen the rule of law and promote bilateral cooperation…

In November 2016, news agencies reported the discovery of mass graves believed to contain the remains of Ezidis in Iraq. Voice of America published an article on mass graves found in Sinjar

Da’esh forces occupied Sinjar in the summer of 2014, capturing Ezidis living in the area, and torturing and killing many of them. The first mass grave containing the remains of Ezidis was found in November 2015 after the town of Sinjar was retaken by Kurdish forces. The grave contained the remains of at least 78 women and children.

The Ezidi religious faith combines Islamic belief with…

Bojana Djokanovic considers the impact of renewed support in November and December 2016 for ICMP from key government partners.

The problem of missing and disappeared persons has intensified over the last two decades for a variety of reasons including climate change, migration, organized crime, and political instability in some parts of the world. The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) is the only intergovernmental organization tasked exclusively to work on this issue.

In November and December 2016, a number of donor governments renewed their support for ICMP’s global effort to help states address the challenge of large numbers of missing persons. The Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands made a financial contribution of one million euros to support ICMP’s global operations and to enable its transition to new headquarters in The Hague; the British Government made a commitment to provide ICMP with up…

An ICMP-IOM roundtable in The Hague highlights the need for greater international coordination in addressing the issue of missing migrants. To read the report, please click here.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has released preliminary figures for all migrant or refugee deaths worldwide in 2016 – reporting that 7,495 men, women and children died or went missing across five continents. This compares to 5,267 in 2014 and 5,740 last year, and brings the total for three years to 18,501. Migrant routes were more deadly in 2016, particularly  the Central Mediterranean route between North Africa and Europe, where nearly 4,600 migrants perished.

The issues surrounding missing migrants and refugees are unusually complex, involving a wide variety of legal, geographical and political factors. Migrants and refugees may be fleeing conflicts which are the subject of competing diplomatic interests; sea crossings bring international maritime…

A selection of news stories from key areas around the world where the issue of enforced disappearance and missing persons represented a strategic challenge in 2016.

Mediterranean Migration

Despite efforts by a number of organizations, including ICMP, the number of fatalities among migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean rose in 2016, thousands of trafficking victims went missing, and families in war-stricken parts of Africa and the Middle East were forced to endure additional trauma through the “ambiguous loss” of not knowing the fate of a missing loved one. Reuters reported on 9 January that dozens of Ethiopian and Somali migrants had died in the waters off Somaliland when control of their vessel was lost. Ninety-six bodies were washed ashore.  Newsweek carried a story on 16 February saying that tighter restrictions on the Greece-Macedonia border were leading to refugees slipping off the authorities’ radar. “People who…