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The Hague, 23 May 2025: Last Wednesday 21st in Washington DC, Mr John Terzano, a member of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) Panel of Experts, met with Viet Nam Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Do Hung Viet and provided a brief on the progress that ICMP and its Vietnamese partners are making under a US-supported program to help Viet Nam account for hundreds of thousands of people still missing from the conflicts of the last century. Deputy Minister Viet is in the US for bilateral talks.
In October 2022, the Institute of Biology (previously, the Institute of Biotechnology)-Viet Nam Academy of Science and Technology (IB-VAST) and ICMP signed an Implementation Plan under a broader US assistance program. In coordination with VAST and with the support of the Viet Nam Office of Seeking Missing Persons, within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Plan established a framework for the transfer of Vietnamese bone samples to ICMP’s human identification laboratories in The Hague, the Netherlands, for joint DNA analysis and testing and workflow optimization, as well as training and other capacity-building measures.
Mr Terzano, a US navy veteran who served two tours in Viet Nam and who has been involved in reconciliation efforts since 1981, noted that the missing persons program is seen within Viet Nam as one of the most important remaining tasks in addressing the legacy of conflict. Mr Terzano, who was one of the foreign representatives who participated in celebrations in Hanoi in April to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, said, “ICMP is providing practical assistance based on scientific expertise and broader strategies that have been found to work in other countries recovering from conflict – particularly those strategies that enable families of the missing to become involved.”
The passage of time represents a major challenge in the Viet Nam context. Human remains that have been buried for 50 to 70 years in a tropical environment are extremely degraded. Even where it is possible to extract DNA profiles from degraded skeletal remains, these profiles have to be compared with living relatives for the purpose of identification – and after such a long time, close relatives, including children and grandchildren, have in many cases already died.
In 2023, an innovative technique developed jointly by scientists from IB-VAST and ICMP produced a scientific breakthrough in DNA testing and comparison. Using this technique, it is now possible to use a single-family reference sample to make a match between a great, great grandparent and a great, great grandchild.
ICMP is now helping IB-VAST to develop its own DNA testing workflows and Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) capabilities. These will be supported by data analysis tools, with the goal of establishing an automated system to process large numbers of samples and volumes of genetic data generated by NGS.
The present phase of the joint program is expected to be completed in July, when Viet Nam and the United States will mark the 30th anniversary of the normalization of relations. On 11 July in Hanoi, ICMP will present lab equipment to its Vietnamese partners, and it is envisaged that Phase 2 of the cooperation program will begin at the same time.
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, irregular migration and other causes and to assist them in doing so. ICMP is among the global leaders in developing NGS for the purpose of identifying missing persons.
