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Kyiv, 29 May 2024: Even in the most difficult circumstances Ukraine is capable of developing an effective system to account for large numbers of missing persons, the Director-General of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), Kathryne Bomberger, stressed in an article that was published today by New Voice.
“Evidence can be gathered and missing persons can be located and reliably identified,” Bomberger wrote. “An efficient and effective system will make it possible for families to learn the truth about the fate of their loved ones. It will also play an important role in maintaining the integrity and credibility of institutions, and in ensuring that evidence gathered in missing persons investigations can be used in future war crimes prosecutions.”
Bomberger pointed out that “Ukraine has a fund of scientific expertise and administrative capacity, but the system was never designed to cope with the tens of thousands of cases that have arisen as a result of the Russian invasion.” She suggested that existing resources might be coordinated better to make them more effective, and that gaps in resources and expertise could be plugged.
“As a treaty-based intergovernmental organization with Headquarters in The Hague, ICMP does not attempt to take over the role of national institutions – it works with them to identify gaps where it can provide expertise and resources,” Bomberger wrote.
In Kyiv today, ICMP launched the first of a series of roundtables on accounting for the missing in Ukraine. Further roundtables are schedule to take place in June in Warsaw, to examine ways of helping Ukraine to expand a DNA-led mass identification program, and in The Hague, to support efforts to reunite missing children with their families. “Targeted and constructive discussion of key strategic issues is an essential step in building the national consensus that is required to sustain an effective missing persons process,” Bomberger wrote. “The strategy must have the agreement and understanding of all the relevant institutions and the active support of civil society, including families of the missing.”
The full text of today’s article can be read here.
About ICMP
ICMP is a treaty-based intergovernmental organization with Headquarters in The Hague, the Netherlands. Its mandate is to secure the co-operation of governments and other authorities in locating persons missing as a result of conflicts, human rights abuses, disasters, organized violence and other causes and to assist them in doing so.
ICMP helped to identify victims of Flight MH17 in July 2014. It subsequently recommended legislative and institutional measures to enhance Ukraine’s capacity to account for missing persons. Many of these recommendations had already been implemented before the 2022 invasion. In April 2022, the authorities in Ukraine requested urgent ICMP assistance. ICMP deployed staff in the Spring of 2022, opened an office in Kyiv in July, and launched a comprehensive program to help the Ukrainian institutions account for those who are missing as a result of the Russian invasion.
ICMP’s Ukraine Program is supported by the European Union and the governments of Canada, Germany, Norway, and the United States.
