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National Indigenous Peoples Day: Helping Survivors Investigate Suspected IRS Crimes
The Hague, 21 June 2023: The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) recognizes on this Indigenous Peoples Day the tremendous weight that Survivors and communities continue to carry on the issue of Missing Indigenous Children and Unmarked Graves from the former Indian Residential Schools (IRS) across Canada. ICMP looks forward to working with families and survivors on their journey to obtaining answers and securing justice.
The First Nations leadership, including through a resolution by the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) Chiefs, mandated the AFN to invite ICMP to facilitate and support an Indigenous-led process to explore options for addressing the issue of unmarked burials. Accordingly, the Technical Arrangement signed between Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC) and ICMP in January 2023 envisaged ICMP working with Indigenous survivors and families, including working with Metis and Inuit Survivors and families.
ICMP welcomes the timely publication of the Interim Report Sacred Responsibility: Searching for the Missing Children and Unmarked Burials, by the Special Interlocutor (SI). As the SI points out: “Canada has an obligation to provide effective mechanisms for redress and to support Indigenous families and communities to uphold their responsibilities to future generations. This includes ensuring proper investigations are done that include respect for, and inclusion of, Indigenous laws, protocols, and processes throughout the investigations. It also includes ensuring that the systemic patterns of mistreatment, neglect and willful harm perpetrated against children at Indian Residential Schools that contributed to the deaths of children be fully investigated in a manner that is responsive to Survivors and communities and holds individuals and institutions accountable.”
This obligation includes ensuring effective investigations that correspond to individual and collective rights of families and communities, including criminal investigations, where human rights guarantees have been breached. These breaches include abuses of the right to life, the right to family life and family identity, and the prohibition of torture and genocide.
ICMP’s mandate is complementary to but distinct from that of the Office of the Special Interlocutor (OSI), and that of the National Advisory Committee (NAC) of the Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR). ICMP is uniquely positioned to support Indigenous data sovereignty through agreements that ensure that data is processed subject to Indigenous laws, outside the domestic jurisdiction of states. Meanwhile, as stated in the Interim Report, communities are taking care not to judge or push people away from engaging. ICMP’s engagement as an independent international organization will contribute to countering denial. ICMP can also enter into direct arrangements with First Nation, Inuit and Metis communities and looks forward to exploring this and many other options for support to Indigenous communities across Canada.
Former Grand Chief Sheila North, who leads ICMP’s work with Indigenous communities, stressed that ICMP brings a wealth of experience to addressing the issue of unmarked burials. “As an intergenerational Survivor and Thriver of Residential Schools, I accept the tremendous responsibility and privilege of working with and for Survivors across Canada to help secure justice for all Missing and Murdered Indigenous children and to honor their memory. Today I carried the memory of families and Survivors with me as I addressed the ICMP Board of Commissioners and Conference of States Parties in The Hague.”
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 other authorities in locating missing persons as a result of armed conflict, human rights abuses, natural and man-made disasters, and other involuntary reasons and to assist them in doing so. ICMP also supports the work of other organizations in their efforts, encourages public involvement in its activities and contributes to the development of appropriate expressions of commemoration and tribute to the missing.[1]
[1] Article II, Agreement on the Status and Function of the International Commission on Missing Persons, Brussels, 15 December 2014[:]
