Mediterranean countries launch plan to identify migrants lost at sea

Four European Mediterranean countries are launching an initiative to identify thousands of migrants who have died or gone missing during the perilous sea crossing to Europe, the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) said on 18 April.

Italy, Greece, Malta and Cyprus, the gateway countries to Europe for most migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, will gather on 11 June in Rome to discuss the plan, which would put to rest thousands of cases of missing migrants. Italy alone has recovered some 8,000 bodies from Mediterranean waters over the last decade. Libya and Egypt are also to be invited as observers to the talks.
Over the next two years the ICMP will set up a programme to locate and identify people who have died during journeys across the Mediterranean.

The programme will first assess the situation to find out details like the number of unidentified bodies and where the remains are held or have been buried.

Depending on whether there is adequate funding, a second phase would begin after 2019 and see the organisation taking DNA samples and trying to match them with relatives who have reported a missing family member.

The ICMP was created out of the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and has successfully identified 70 per cent of the 40,000 people who went missing in the Balkan conflicts and 90 per cent of the 8,000 killed in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre using sophisticated DNA research methods.

This advanced application of DNA technology, which makes it possible to use samples from distant family members, could also be used to help identify undocumented migrants.

“We are now on the brink of a new level of being able to roll out this possibility to missing migrants, including the 10,000 children missing in Europe,” head of ICMP, Kathyrne Bomberger said in October when the ICMP moved its headquarters from Sarajevo to the Hague.

Since the beginning of the year, almost 18,000 migrants arrived in Europe by sea, according to IOM, the UN migrant agency. At least 559 migrants have been reported dead or missing in the Mediterranean so far in 2018.

TMP – 09/05/2018