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6 March 2025, The Hague – The International Commission on Missing persons (ICMP) formally opened its newly renovated DNA laboratories today. The new facilities will make a major contribution to addressing the global challenge of missing persons and represent an investment in peace and stability.
Over the last several decades ICMP, has helped countries around the world to develop domestic capacities to locate missing persons from war, human rights abuses, manmade and natural disasters, organized crime, migration and other circumstances where persons go missing for involuntary reasons. Addressing this issue is now more critical than ever as global numbers are on the rise due to conflict and the consequences of global warming.
ICMP’s human identification laboratories, which incorporate state-of-the-art technologies form part of ICMP’s standing capacities to help families of the missing around the world secure their rights to justice, truth and reparations, by providing scientific proof of identity that contributes to a broader rule-of-law-based process. ICMP’s ISO 17025-accredited human identification laboratories in The Hague play a central role in this approach.
In addition to delivering DNA profiles for human identification, and in coordination with the Wim Kok Center for Excellence and Learning (CEL), the expanded laboratory team conducts training programs and works closely with other laboratories and academic institutions around the world to support the continuous development of techniques and expertise.
“Our labs have trained technicians from multiple countries, empowering national teams to develop independent DNA-led identification programs,” ICMP Director-General Kathryne Bomberger said today. “The upgrade ensures that our DNA testing is fully aligned with the latest forensic techniques and standards. It expands our surge capacity and allows us to respond swiftly to urgent requests for DNA profiling of unidentified remains.”
In 2024 ICMP launched an initiative to provide governments around the world with a standing Disaster Victim Identification capacity that countries will be able to access whenever they are faced with a sudden need to account for large numbers of missing persons. ICMP’s DNA laboratories in The Hague can provide this standing capacity, on which governments would be able to call when catastrophe strikes.
ICMP’s laboratories have processed DNA samples from more than 40 countries and have contributed to roughly 20,000 DNA-based identifications since 2001. Today, ICMP is working with genetic scientists in Ukraine, the Western Balkans, the South Caucuses, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and elsewhere, producing DNA profiles from challenging bone samples and transferring expertise through dedicated training programs. ICMP is grateful to the German Federal Foreign Office (FFO) and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) for the financial support that has enabled the expansion and comprehensive upgrade of the DNA laboratories.
About ICMP
ICMP is a treaty-based intergovernmental organization headquartered 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, irregular migration, and other causes, and to assist them in doing so.
