5 December 2015: A conference organized in Tirana on Friday by the Albanian Ministry of Social Welfare and Youth explored ways of implementing a strategy to account for the estimated 6,000 people who disappeared in the country during the period of authoritarian rule from 1944 to 1991.

“After adoption of the Law on opening the files from the Communist era, starting the program to find missing persons is one of the most important political decisions of the Albanian state,” said Minister of Social Welfare and Youth Blendi Klosi. “Opening the files and starting the program to find missing from the dictatorship era are parts of the same process.”

In March 2015, ICMP received an invitation from the Ministry of Social Welfare and Youth to discuss potential paths of cooperation between ICMP and the Albanian authorities to address the issue of persons missing during the period of the Communist regime. An ICMP…

24 November 2015: Effective tools have been developed to address the global missing persons crisis created by natural disasters, conflict and migration, Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan said on Monday during a presentation at the Blavatnik School of Government in Oxford.

“The issue of the missing is no longer being tackled solely as a humanitarian issue and by humanitarian actors, but as a public law issue to be addressed by public institutions including domestic courts, prosecutors and law enforcement,” Queen Noor said.

Describing the evolution of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), which emerged from the post-war recovery process in the Western Balkans 20 years ago, she said ICMP could serve as a model for creating “a light but efficient modern international organization”.

ICMP cooperates with governments and other authorities in locating and identifying persons missing as a result of…

20 November 2015: Three senior representatives of the Kosovo Forensic Agency, Chief Executive Officer Blerim Olluri, Director of Serology and DNA Operations Sokol Dedaj, and Head of the DNA Laboratory Fatmir Ademi, visited ICMP’s facilities in Sarajevo today, where they were briefed by Head of the Western Balkans Program Matthew Holliday, and senior ICMP forensic sciences staff.

Today’s visit is part of a four-day fact-finding trip to Bosnia and Herzegovina which has included visits to ICMP’s Identification Coordination Division and the Podrinje Identification Project, both in Tuzla, and ICMP’s laboratory in Banja Luka. In October, ICMP technical staff visited the KFA in Prishtina to assess ways in which ICMP can provide technical assistance to the KFA.

The KFA is primarily a crime laboratory. It was established in 2003 and has received extensive support from the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program.

Blerim Olluri…

18 November 2015: El Salvador today became the sixth country to sign the Agreement on the Status and Functions of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). In December 2014, the Agreement was signed by the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium and Luxembourg. It recognizes ICMP as an international organization tasked with assisting countries in their efforts to address missing persons cases from conflict, human rights abuses, disasters, organized crime, migration and other causes.

Today’s signing ceremony will facilitate ICMP’s capacity to work with the authorities in El…

10 November 2015: Microsoft Corporation has donated US$474,791 in software to the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). This will allow ICMP to maintain and enhance its Integrated Database Management System (IDMS) software and add efficiency to its global communications.

This is the fifth major donation by Microsoft to ICMP. It donated software in 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2015 under its global “Unlimited Potential” initiative, which provides software support to non-profit organizations.

“ICMP operates a state-of-the-art iDMS and runs programs in many different parts of the world,” said ICMP Director-General Kathryne Bomberger. “Microsoft’s assistance has been and continues to be of paramount importance to us as we develop our human identification database and expand our communications network to manage projects separated by large distances.”

The iDMS is a specialized software solution developed by ICMP for managing large scale missing persons programs. It has…