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Beirut, 13 February 2026: The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) and Lebanon’s National Commission for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared (NCMFD) signed an End User License Agreement (EULA) today to strengthen cooperation and support national efforts to account for persons missing as a result of Lebanon’s civil war.
The agreement formalizes ICMP’s assistance to the NCMFD through the use of Integrated Data Management System (iDMS) software, secure data-management solutions, and technical expertise. This will enhance the NCMFD’s capacity to collect, centralize, manage, and safeguard case information in accordance with international standards and best practice, in this way supporting efforts to provide families of the missing with secure and reliable answers.
“The EULA signed today reflects ICMP’s commitment to Lebanese families seeking truth and justice,” ICMP Director-General Kathryne Bomberger said. “Our support to the NCMFD will enhance the management and protection of information on missing persons, and I believe it can represent the beginning of a long-term collaboration.”
After more than three decades, Lebanon continues to contend with the legacy of civil war. The number of persons missing or forcibly disappearing is commonly cited at around 17,000, reflecting the scale of the challenge facing families and authorities.
“The signing of the EULA is an important step for the NCMFD, reinforcing our approach to managing information on missing persons in line with professional standards,” said NCMFD President Judge Joseph Samaha.
The NCMFD is an independent state institution established to address the issue of missing and forcibly disappeared persons, including those from the civil war period. The Commission was created under Article 9 of Law No. 105 (2018) the Law on Missing and Forcibly Disappeared Persons and was formed by Council of Ministers Decree No. 6570 on 3 July 2020. The law grants the Commission legal personality and administrative and financial autonomy and sets out a human-centered, rights-based mandate to document cases, search for the missing, manage and preserve related records, and regularly inform and assist families.
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.
