Memorialization is a key element in any public dialogue over missing persons, Dr Nicolas Moll said during a seminar held at the International Commission on Missing Persons in Sarajevo in November. He stressed that the location, design and wording of memorials pose complex challenges to societies seeking to heal wounds arising from conflict and human rights violations.

“Until the nineteenth century, memorialization tended to be focused on monarchs and military victories,” Dr Moll said. “Even in the nineteenth century the names of soldiers were not important but this changed with World War One, when individual names – including the names of the missing – became important.”

Dr Moll cited the Thiepval Memorial in Northern France, which lists the names of more than 72,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers whose remains were never identified following the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

The period immediately after World War One saw a huge surge in memorialization, and the…

CADHAC, a campaigning Mexican human rights group, has been short-listed for the prestigious annual Tulip Human Rights Award.

Citizens in Support for Human Rights (Ciudadanos en Apoyo a los Derechos Humanos – CADHAC), was founded in 1993 in the state of Nuevo León in Northeastern Mexico. Its activities have focused on helping people who have been wrongfully imprisoned, and families of the disappeared.

CADHAC has developed an innovative operating method that brings together families of victims, civil society and the authorities.

“Collaborative work makes the difference in CADHAC’s approach,” said CADHAC Director Sister Consuelo Morales. “All the actors – families of victims, authorities and organized civil society – working together in this mechanism of transparency, accountability and battle for justice are an exceptional example of collaborative practice. In a country like Mexico, civil society does not tend to trust the authorities and the authorities do not usually work or interact with civil…