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Baku, Azerbaijan, 10 October 2025: Accounting for missing persons from the conflicts in the South Caucasus is a key element in consolidating peace in the region, Kathryne Bomberger, the Director-General of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), told participants at an international conference organized in Baku this week by the Azerbaijan State Commission on Prisoners of War, Hostages and Missing Persons.
Roughly 5,000 people are missing as a result of three decades of conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. On 8 August 2025, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan initialed a draft Peace Agreement. Under the Agreement the two sides are committed to exchanging information on missing persons cases, in cooperation with international organizations, and will seek to ensure “that justice is served through proper investigations.”
Ms. Bomberger stressed that a successful missing persons process depends on “Cooperation between States and families of the missing; cooperation between domestic institutions; cooperation with international organizations; and cooperation between countries, especially those that were at war.” She also noted that, “The bedrock of a successful missing persons program is the active cooperation of the families of the missing.”
Earlier this year, ICMP presented comprehensive Assessment Reports, compiled at the request of the respective governments in Baku and Yerevan, laying out next steps in building a systematic, law-based process to account for those who are still missing in the region. These steps include improving legislative and institutional frameworks, enhancing scientific and forensic capacities, engaging civil society, advancing data management capabilities, and fostering regional and international cooperation. “Azerbaijan and Armenia have already made substantial progress,” Ms. Bomberger said. “Key among the steps that should now be taken is the need to cooperate in order to locate missing persons – for the sake of the families and society and for the sake of peace and stability.”
Ms Bomberger said the countries of the former Yugoslavia have demonstrated that regional cooperation can sustain an effective process, even in the face of political obstacles. At the conference in Baku, Mr. Ali Naghiyev, Chair of the State Commission, and Mr. Marko Jurišić, Chair of the Missing Persons Institute of Bosnia and Herzegovina, signed a Memorandum of Understanding.
During her visit to Azerbaijan, Ms. Bomberger met with Ms. Amy Carlon, Chargé d’Affaires of the US Embassy in Baku, Ms. Marianne de Jong, Ambassador of the Netherlands, and Ms. Marijana Kujundžić, Ambassador of the European Union.
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 from conflict, human rights abuses, disasters, organized crime, migration and other causes and to assist them in doing so. Created at the 1996 G-7 Summit to address the issue of persons missing as a consequence of the conflicts in the Western Balkans, ICMP has been working globally since 2004.
