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Resolution 1956 (2013) Final version
Missing persons from Europe’s conflicts: the long road to finding humanitarian answers
1. Solving the problem of missing
persons following armed conflicts in Europe is vital for establishing reconciliation
between war-torn societies and former warring parties and ensuring
peace on the European continent.
2. There are still more than 20 000 missing persons following
conflicts in Cyprus, the Balkans and the North and South Caucasus.
3. Two of the main reasons why the problem of missing persons
has not yet been solved are lack of political will and individuals’
fear of reprisals. To these problems can be added the limited national
capacity in many countries and the lack of qualified forensic experts,
as well as the budgetary constraints which in the present economic
crisis affect the process of recovery and identification of missing
persons.
4. The Parliamentary Assembly reminds the member States of the
Council of Europe of their obligation to clarify the fate and whereabouts
of missing persons under human rights and international humanitarian
law. This obligation derives, inter alia,
from the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the 2006 International Convention
for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance and
Articles 2 and 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ETS
No. 5).
5. The Assembly welcomes the range of judgments of the European
Court of Human Rights concerning persons who went missing following
conflicts between Cyprus and Turkey, in the former Yugoslavia, as
well as in the Chechen Republic. These judgments highlight the responsibility
of States to trace missing persons and hold them to account for
failing to do so. These judgments also clarify that States involved
in relevant conflicts remain under an obligation to solve the issue
of missing persons until a proper investigation has been carried out.
This means that these States can be held accountable for many years
after a disappearance has occurred. The Assembly also notes that
through further examination of relevant cases, the European Court
of Human Rights will push member States to speed up the process
of bringing truth to families on the fate of their missing relatives.
6. Considerable progress has been made to solve the issue of
missing persons following conflicts in Cyprus and in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia. In other conflicts, involving Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Georgia and the Russian Federation, truth recovery remains
a pressing issue which hinders reconciliation.
7. Therefore, the Assembly considers that there are five priorities
that have to be tackled by member States and relevant de facto authorities to solve the
problem of missing persons in Europe, both now and in the future.
7.1. The first priority is to place
families concerned at the centre of all action concerning the issue
of missing persons. The Assembly therefore calls on member States
and relevant de facto authorities
to:
7.1.1. promote multidisciplinary assessments of the
needs of families of missing persons;
7.1.2. provide such families with the necessary legal, psychological
and social assistance;
7.1.3. ensure that the needs of single heads of families are
given special attention, taking into account the specific situation
of women;
7.1.4. involve families in the investigations into the cases
of their missing relatives;
7.1.5. provide assistance to associations of families, as they
contribute significantly to the process of solving the issue of
missing persons.
7.2. As a second priority, the development and promotion of
national legislation remains essential in addressing the problem
of missing persons, in particular in preventing disappearances,
ascertaining the fate of missing persons, ensuring the proper management
of information and supporting families of the missing. Therefore,
the Assembly calls on member States, as well as relevant de facto authorities, to create
the necessary legal framework to solve the problem of missing persons
in Europe, and to:
7.2.1. recognise in legislation the right
to know, and to ensure that the systematic denial by authorities
of the right of the families of missing persons to an effective
investigation and to know the truth is punished as a criminal offence;
7.2.2. recognise in legislation every missing person as a legal
personality;
7.2.3. codify, in legislation, enforced disappearance as a criminal
offence;
7.2.4. ensure that perpetrators of enforced disappearance are
prosecuted;
7.2.5. make sure that perpetrators of enforced disappearance
do not benefit from any amnesty or similar measures that might exempt
them from criminal responsibility.
7.3. Supporting the functioning of national and regional mechanisms
created to prevent and solve the problem of missing persons is a
third priority. The Assembly encourages member States and de facto authorities concerned,
where relevant, to:
7.3.1. take all necessary measures to
recover the human remains of missing persons and return them to
their families, whenever possible;
7.3.2. make sure that national or other mechanisms dealing with
the issue of missing persons are independent and impartial in their
working methods;
7.3.3. involve non-governmental organisations working on the
issue of missing persons in the work of national or other mechanisms
on missing persons and provide them with support;
7.3.4. offer clear and strong support and provide all necessary
assistance to existing national, bilateral and regional mechanisms
addressing the issue of missing persons;
7.3.5. support joint projects developed through bilateral and
regional co-operation mechanisms which could be of assistance to
other countries and regions in addressing the issue of missing persons.
7.4. Access to information on missing persons, which is essential
in establishing their identity, location and fate and the circumstances
of their disappearance and/or death is a fourth priority. The Assembly therefore
calls on member States and relevant de
facto authorities to:
7.4.1. appoint a special
authority to centralise all information available on missing persons
and to be in charge of collecting and checking ante-mortem data and ensuring a
reliable procedure for implementing identification measures;
7.4.2. collect, protect and manage data on missing persons according
to international standards and to co-operate with each other on
the exchange of information, notwithstanding the often difficult
political relationship between parties to the conflict;
7.4.3. make sure that the data on missing persons is only used
for the purpose for which it was collected and not for any other
purpose, unless the consent of the persons concerned is obtained.
7.5. As a fifth priority, it is important that all feasible
measures be taken to identify the human remains of missing persons
and to record their identity. The Assembly therefore calls on member
States and relevant de facto authorities
to:
7.5.1. respect the right of families to recover the
remains of their missing family members and to ensure that the identification
process of human remains includes DNA analysis and other forensic
and scientific methods of expertise;
7.5.2. make sure that all professionals involved in forensic
recovery respect the legal rules and professional ethics applicable
to the management, recovery and identification of human remains;
7.5.3. ensure ownership of the forensic expertise, including
forensic expertise provided by the International Committee of the
Red Cross (ICRC) and the International Commission on Missing Persons
(ICMP).
8. In addition to the five priorities put forward above, the
Assembly calls on member States to:
8.1. provide financial support and human resources to the activities
of international bodies dealing with the problem of missing persons,
in particular, the ICRC, the United Nations Working Group on Enforced
or Involuntary Disappearances and the ICMP;
8.2. become a Party to the 2006 International Convention on
the Protection of All Persons Against Enforced Disappearance as
soon as possible, if they have not already done so.
9. The Assembly encourages the Council of Europe Commissioner
for Human Rights to continue his activities in monitoring the problem
of missing persons as a result of armed conflicts in the countries
and regions concerned.
10. The Assembly recognises the important role played by the ICRC
and other organisations such as the ICMP in resolving cases of disappearance
during and after armed conflicts and on raising awareness of the problem
of missing persons in Europe. It encourages the ICRC and other organisations
to continue their valuable assistance to the countries and regions
concerned in solving the issue of missing persons.