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Kyiv, 24 February 2026: More than 80,000 people are missing in Ukraine as a result of the full-scale invasion launched by the Russian Federation four years ago today. The country is grappling with the huge task of investigating these disappearances. Despite the challenges posed by the ongoing conflict, Ukraine remains committed to, and has taken strides towards, fulfilling its legal obligations to investigate all cases, to support affected families and to ensure accountability.
The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) has been working with Ukrainian authorities and civil society since 2014 to support efforts to account for the missing.
“Ukraine has made significant progress in establishing an effective missing persons system,” Matthew Holliday, the Head of ICMP’s Ukraine Program, said today. He noted that modern forensic science and database technology are being used, and “ICMP is working with the relevant ministries to provide assistance where there are gaps in expertise or capacity. By sharing best practice, it can help the authorities to develop a sustainable strategy to deliver identifications at a scale that matches the huge number of missing.”
Immediately after the full-scale invasion, the Office of the Prosecutor-General asked ICMP to step up its assistance. ICMP responded immediately, and today it is helping Ukraine to strengthen its technical, institutional, and legal capacity to investigate cases, from the professional recovery and examination of human remains, to determining cause and manner of death, to DNA-led identification. ICMP is also working with Ukrainian civil society and associations of families of the missing to ensure that they take a central role in the process.
ICMP’s Ukraine Program is made possible through the generous support of Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, the United States, and Canada.
About ICMP
ICMP is a treaty-based intergovernmental organization with Headquarters in The Hague, the Netherlands. Its mandate is to secure the cooperation of governments and others in locating missing persons as a result of armed conflicts, human rights abuses, natural and man-made disasters and other involuntary reasons and to assist them in doing so.
