“The system must be changed to investigate cases involving hundreds of thousands of missing persons,” Director General of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) Kathryne Bomberger said at the 4th International Conference held within the framework of the Baku Dialogue on Missing Persons, APA reports.
She said one of the important differences between the Dayton Peace Agreement and Article 9 of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Peace Agreement is the emphasis on the transition from the parties to the conflict to the responsibility of states.
“Here, it is no longer about the warring parties, but about states and the responsibility of states. This approach is in line with the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. Under that Convention, states must investigate cases involving missing persons,” Bomberger noted.
The ICMP Director General said a number of countries are currently facing problems involving very large numbers of missing persons.
“There are 114,000 missing persons in Ukraine and 300,000 in Syria. In Mexico, there are more than 100,000 missing persons, including missing migrants. There are also more than 100,000 missing persons in Colombia. There is no accurate information on the number of missing persons in most parts of Africa. The number of missing persons in Vietnam is also very high,” she emphasized.
Bomberger noted that transitioning from a system accustomed to conducting investigations involving a small number of missing persons to a system in which cases involving hundreds of thousands of missing persons are investigated requires serious changes.
“In this case, everything must be completely changed. First of all, large-scale collection of information from the families of missing persons is required. This includes information about their missing relatives, where they went missing, and the date of their disappearance,” the ICMP head said.
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