The Hague, 30 August 2024: – Conflicts in Ukraine, Syria, Gaza, Sudan, and elsewhere have produced a spike in the number of missing and disappeared persons around the world – a trend compounded by the consequences of climate change, including mass migration.
Today, as the world marks International Day of the Disappeared, the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) calls on governments and stakeholders to work proactively to address this growing global challenge.
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“Effective measures are available – to document cases, to locate and identify victims, to return living victims to their families and to return the remains of deceased victims to their loved ones so that they can be buried with dignity, and so that the rights of surviving families to justice, truth and reparations can be secured” ICMP Director-General Kathryne Bomberger said today, and she stressed that, “data collection and management systems have been developed that cross borders if necessary, bringing relevant agencies together to apply the latest genetic science.”
ICMP Chairperson Knut Vollebaek highlighted the fact that “in Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Vietnam and in other countries, ICMP is helping the authorities and families of the missing to develop systematic programs. By helping families of the missing to access their rights we are upholding our own rights, rights that are inalienable and indivisible.”
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To mark the Day of the Disappeared, ICMP organized a series of events across its programs. In Albania, in collaboration with the Authority for the Information on the Former State Security Documents, ICMP and the European Union co-organized and co-funded an event earlier this week in Pogradec, on the coast of Lake Ohrid, and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, ICMP, with EU and Sweden’s assistance, supported commemoration events today in the towns of Bijeljina and Brčko, as well as in Srebrenica. ICMP also participated at a commemoration organized in Sarajevo by the Advisory Board of the Missing Persons Institute.
In Iraq, ICMP organized an event at Halabja University in the Kurdistan Region, together with three civil society organizations (CSOs), bringing together families of the missing from Sinjar, Chamchamal, and Halabja/Barzan.
ICMP’s Syria Program organized a three-day series of workshops in Geneva, supported by the United Kingdom, which concluded today. The workshops brought together CSOs and families of the missing from Syria and the Syrian Diaspora to examine ways to support CSOs to create a strategic vision to find missing persons in Syria, as well as along migratory routes and to work effectively with international agencies that are addressing the issue of missing persons.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, with support from the Government of Norway, CSO beneficiaries of ICMP’s Small Grants Program, organized roundtable discussions, photo exhibitions and fundraising events today in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Kostiantynivka and Volodymyrets.
About ICMP
ICMP is a treaty-based intergovernmental organization that seeks to ensure the cooperation of governments and others in locating missing persons from conflict, human rights abuses, disasters, organized crime, migration, and other causes, and to assist them in doing so. ICMP also supports the work of other organizations in their efforts, encourages public involvement in its activities and contributes to the development of appropriate expressions of commemoration and tribute to the missing.
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