The organization that identified tens of thousands of victims from the Balkan wars of the 1990s on Tuesday opened a new global headquarters in the Netherlands from where it will take on new cases around the world.
The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), established after the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, will use the latest DNA technology to identify bodies.
There are millions of reported cases of missing persons worldwide, with as many as a million in Iraq, tens of thousands in Syria and Lebanon, and many more from Colombia to the Philippines.
“The numbers are staggering,” ICMP head Kathyrne Bomberger said. “Moving here increases the perception that we are a global organization and understand that the issue of missing persons itself is a huge global problem that isn’t just in the western Balkans.”
The ICMP, which has identified 20,000 remains and provided evidence in 30 criminal trials, is to continue working with war crimes courts in The Hague, including the genocide trial of former Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic.
The advanced application of DNA technology, which has now made it possible to use samples from distant family members to create comparable DNA profiles, 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,” Bomberger said.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Japan’s northeast region late on Monday, prompting tsunami warnings and orders for residents to evacuate. A tsunami as high as three metres (10 feet) could hit Japan’s northeastern coast after an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.6 occurred offshore at 11:15 p.m. (1415 GMT), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. Tsunami warnings were issued for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori and Iwate, and a tsunami of 40cm had been observed at Aomori’s Mutsu Ogawara and Hokkaido’s Urakawa ports before midnight, JMA said. The epicentre of the quake was 80 km (50 miles) off the coast of
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
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