Civil Society Initiatives

As part of its mandate, ICMP encourages the active participation of civil society and in particular the families of the missing. It does this through education, training and grant-making programs aimed at empowering family members and others.

In cases where persons are missing as a result of conflict or human rights abuses, ICMP works with survivor groups to rebuild trust between rival groups and within states in transition and to ensure that civil society participates in the creation of institutions, legislation and commemorative events and other forms of memorialization relevant to missing persons.

Furthermore, the use of modern forensic methods to identify the missing requires the voluntary participation of relatives in the provision of reference samples to conduct kinship matching of post-mortem samples. Voluntary participation necessitates intensive education programs in the use of DNA in human identification. It also requires the voluntary consent of relatives to provide personal information, including genetic information.

In an effort to foster a process of dealing with the past, ICMP works directly with members of associations of families of missing persons and other civil society actors to encourage greater cooperation among different religious/national groups in order to solve common problems and advocate for more effective policies.