Driving a worldwide effort to better tackle the issue of missing people
Armed conflicts, violence, disasters and migration all result in people going missing
When someone goes missing, their family endures terrible psychological and material hardship. Left in limbo, waiting for news, not knowing if their loved one is alive or dead, families are unable to move on with their lives. In addition to the emotional suffering, losing their main breadwinner can leave households struggling to make ends meet. The family members left behind – and even their children and their children’s children – can be stigmatized and ostracized by their communities. In some countries, they struggle with administrative and legal hurdles to obtaining pensions, accessing bank accounts, claiming their inheritance or remarrying.
The ICRC has a specific mandate and decades of experience in tracing people and reuniting and restoring contact between family members during conflict and other violence. No two sets of circumstances – geographical, social or political – are the same. Together with the network of National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, we conduct activities worldwide to help separated families. But current challenges – with protracted conflicts, so many different situations of violence, disasters and migration all leaving ever more people unaccounted for or separated from their families – require all those working on this issue to be more efficient and coordinate with each other. In some places, practitioners have come up with workable solutions. In others, they struggle to get effective responses off the ground. And they often work in isolation, with little contact with their peers elsewhere.
We want to change that.
The Missing Persons Project is a new community of practice for everyone involved in tackling the problem of missing people – practitioners, experts, institutions, States and families. Together, we want to compare experiences, share information and advice, and develop technical standards and best practice that can be applied anywhere in the world.
Crucial questions
What are the most effective ways to collect and manage information about where missing people might be and what has happened to them?
How can we best deliver the psychosocial, legal and financial support that missing people’s families need?
What forensic standards and best practice can help us better analyse and identify mortal remains and solve missing person cases?
How can we prevent migrants from going missing, and how can we find, share and analyse relevant data to help us find them when they do?
Workshop in Guatemala
To come up with answers to these and many other crucial questions that will determine how we improve action on this issue, we are holding a series of meetings around the world that will consider both experts’ and families’ perspectives.
On 15 and 16 May 2019, the ICRC, together with the International Organization for Migration and the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, is organizing a two-day workshop – on clarifying the fate of missing migrants – in La Antigua, Guatemala. The workshop will review current and emerging best practices in obtaining and exchanging information necessary for ascertaining the fate of missing migrants; it will also seek to identify areas where new or better standards are required.
The participants will include experts, representatives from government agencies and from inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations, and families of missing migrants from numerous countries. They will discuss the collection, standardization, and sharing of data. The role of families – who both receive and provide information on missing migrants – will be given particular attention, as will issues related to the lawful use and protection of personal data. Participants will also consider how data on missing people can be analysed and disseminated more effectively, with a view to encouraging evidence-based and humane migration policies and broadening awareness of the issue of missing migrants. Following an experts’ meeting organized by the ICRC and the University of Geneva in December 2018, a process has already begun to establish principles for respectful and dignified management of the dead in humanitarian emergencies.
More experts’ workshops are planned for the next three years.
Join us
If you would like to join the community and help improve efforts to prevent and solve missing person cases, please write to us at: missingpersonsproject@icrc.org