My first appointment in a beautifully snowy Sarajevo this morning was a visit to the International Commission on Missing Persons. Set up in 1996 and funded by a number of countries, including the UK, it is the largest human identification project in the world. The Commission's focus has been on ensuring the cooperation and the parties to the Dayton Agreement and then assisting in the location and identification of missing people from the four year conflict. A key part of this work has been pioneering work on the identification of the victims of the Srebrenica genocide in 1995. Its work has provided thousands of families. with a kind of closure now that they are able to bury and mark the remains of fathers, husbands, uncles, brothers and sons. I saw first hand the remarkable, cutting edge science which is part of the process of matching DNA between relatives and the remains found. And through being able to offer burials for families, the Commission's work has also brought families and communities together. The Commission also works further afield, and has provided invaluable knowledge and expertise following Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami in 2004, for example. After my tour of their Sarajevo-based offices and laboratories, I also did a press conference with the Commission's Chief Operating Officer, Adam Boys, and there is real interest in the vital work it's doing. Find out more about the work of the ICMP here (www.ic-mp.org/).
Posted at 16:47 19 March 2008 by Jim Murphy | Comments[0]
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