ICMP’s Daily World News Digest  brings together news stories dealing with enforced disappearances and missing persons cases from around the world. It offers a snapshot of daily events and over a longer period it highlights key trends.

Migration and Missing Persons

In February, the number of migrants who are lost on the dangerous journey from North Africa and the Middle East to Europe was a major theme. On 9 February the BBC reported that at least 27 people died of hypothermia after being picked up near the Italian island of Lampedusa. They were part of a group of more than a hundred who were found adrift in an inflatable boat about 160 kilometres from Lampedusa. The rescue vessel did not have facilities to protect the migrants from the elements. This, and reports later in February, drew attention to the impact of the decision late last year to replace Italy’s “Mare…

Representatives of associations of families of missing persons, the BiH Missing Persons Institute, the BiH Prosecutor’s Office, and the BiH Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees came together in a series of Town Hall meetings held throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina in February to discuss steps that must be taken in order to sustain the search for missing persons.

The meetings, organized by the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) in Tuzla (3 February), Brcko (4 February), Sarajevo (10 February), Mostar (12 February) and Banja Luka (17 February), focused on the recommendations contained in BiH, Missing Persons from the Armed Conflicts of the 1990s: A Stocktaking, published by ICMP in December 2014 The book-length Stocktaking Report brings together for the first time all of the relevant information on two decades of efforts to account for the missing. It examines specific issues in Lower Podrinje, Upper Podrinje, Herzegovina, Sarajevo, Posavina, Central Bosnia,…

Bojana Djokanovic examines gender roles in conflict, the ways in which these roles are perceived, and the corresponding impact that conflict has on men and women.

To rebuild societies after conflict and to achieve lasting peace, it is imperative that women become active participants in decision-making.

The experiences of women in dealing with war – and with the legacy of war – differ greatly from those of men.

Customarily, men are combatants – and in most conflicts they account for the overwhelming majority of combat casualties and missing in action; historically, men are more likely than women to be in positions of political and military authority before and during conflict, and men are more likely to negotiate peace.

Women often assume the role of principal breadwinner and head of household when husbands leave home to join (or escape from) the military; and women are overwhelmingly more likely to be victims of sexual violence.

One…

Participants at meetings organized this week by ICMP in Tuzla and Brcko – the first of a series of Town Hall meetings that will be held throughout the country during February – unanimously agreed that the book-length Stocktaking Report published by ICMP, which describes two decades of work on accounting for missing persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina, is a valuable platform for further dialogue on missing persons issues based on documented facts.

“We find and we feel that the issue of missing persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been addressed by ICMP without any kind of discrimination,” Milja Mitrovic of the Bijeljina Association of Missing Persons and the RS Association of Missing Persons said at the conclusion of today’s meeting in Brcko. “The presentation of the Stocktaking Report reflects this.”

At both meetings, representatives of associations of families of missing persons, the BiH Missing Persons Institute, the BiH Prosecutor’s Office, and…

At a meeting in The Hague this week, senior officials and legal experts from Libya launched an initiative to strengthen the Libyan justice system’s capacity to address the issue of missing persons.

Participants at a seminar organized by the International Commission on Missing Persons on Monday and Tuesday and entitled “Criminal Procedure and the Use of Evidence in Court-led Processes on Mass Graves and Missing Persons in Libya,” focused on how to expand the use of forensic evidence in court-led processes, and on clarifying inter-institutional responsibilities and legal obligations to family members of the missing.

While considerable progress has been made in building the technical capacity of the Libyan authorities, there are crucial gaps in the institutional and legal framework that need to be addressed in order to locate and identify the missing.

Recent political instability and violence has made it difficult to address much-needed legal reforms in a conclusive way, in…