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Kyiv, 30 May 2024: The Prosecutor’s Training Center of Ukraine (PTCU) and the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) launched a two-day immersive training course today on post-mortem (PM) and ante-mortem (AM) data collection and management practices. This is central to the process of locating and identifying people who have gone missing as a result of the Russian invasion.
In a DNA-led identification system, a small sample is taken from unidentified human remains (PM), while blood samples (AM) are taken from relatives of people who have disappeared. Using sophisticated database technology, DNA from PM and AM samples is compared. Using such a system, it is possible to make thousands of reliable identifications. ICMP has helped authorities around the world to make more than 20,000 DNA-based identifications.
How and what information is collected and managed by different agencies has an impact on the effectiveness of the overall process. The objective of this week’s workshop, which follows a week of online preparation, is to standardize data collection in Ukraine and make it more effective.
“This project is part of a broader program, through which ICMP is transferring specialist skills and capacity to partners in Ukraine,” said ICMP Director-General Kathryne Bomberger, who attended the opening of the training course at the PTCU in Kyiv this morning. “The objective is to help Ukraine further develop a well-coordinated and effective process that can account for the tens of thousands of people who have gone missing as a result of the invasion. This is important for families of the missing, and it is important for the country as a whole because it is indispensable in the effort to deliver justice.”
Director of the PTCU Olesia Otradnova stressed the importance of forensic investigation in the context of judicial proceedings related to missing persons cases.
The PTCU is coordinating with prosecutors from the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Prosecutor’s Offices, and with forensic experts and the National Police (including investigators and specialists-criminalists), so that lessons learned and recommended practice from the training course can be shared broadly.
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.
