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Determining the fate and whereabouts of missing persons with ICRC assistance
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has offered to help Sri Lanka create a domestic mechanism to determine the fate and whereabouts of thousands of missing persons.
Such a mechanism- the framework of which is yet to be proposed- will be separate from any accountability instrument the Government could set up.
“While acknowledging that accountability is important, that process must be distinct from the mechanism to address the needs of families of the missing,” said ICRC spokesperson Sarasi Wijeratne. “The ICRC will not get involved in any accountability mechanism.”
The structure must be financially and politically independent, she held. It should also be empowered to collaborate with relevant bodies, including within the State, in gathering details about missing persons.
However, any data obtained through this mechanism shall not be used for judicial or quasi judicial purposes, Ms Wijeratne said. “The ICRC has testimonial immunity,” she explained. “Information sharing must be done solely for the purpose of clarifying the fact of missing persons.”
ICRC Director of Operations, Dominik Stillhart, who recently completed a five-day visit to Sri Lanka, was encouraged by the Government’s response to his proposal. It was conveyed that the organization, in an advisory role, could assist in drawing up the mandate and terms of reference of the domestic mechanism. It could facilitate interaction with families; help search for and identify human remains; and manage tracing requests.
The ICRC has also offered to train personnel in the management of human remains and mass graves. The organisation is already collaborating with the College of Forensic Pathologists at the Colombo University’s Faculty of Medicine, to design a Diploma course.
“This problem of missing persons will not go away,” Ms Wijeratne pointed out, stressing the importance of a centralised database of information on the missing.
As a first step, the ICRC started a countrywide survey in October 2014 to determine what the families of missing persons need. A sample of 375 families was selected from a total of 16,000 tracing requests registered in the ICRC database since 1990. Among them are relatives of missing military personnel and police. They are scattered throughout five provinces- North, East, West, South and Central- and 12 districts.
A team of 13 trained ICRC staff is conducting the study through interviews lasting between 2-3 hours per family. In coming weeks, they will also speak to groups representing relatives of the missing. The representative sample includes cases dating back to 1990. There is no concentration of cases from a particular period, Ms Wijeratne said: “We have been as impartial as possible with the selection of the sample.”
A majority of the 177 families already interviewed have said their first requirement was to know what had happened to their loved ones. The second was economic support. In most cases, the person that went missing was the main income earner.
The study will be completed in June and its findings shared with the Government during the latter part of 2015. “The needs of these families are diverse and complex,” Ms Wijeratne said. “Those of the mother of a missing person are different to those of a wife of a missing person. Therefore, it is a huge responsibility to capture the information correctly and convey it to the authorities.”
The ICRC has pointed out that any process designed for the benefit of families could emulate one that already exists in Nepal called the ‘accompaniment programme’. “These families are supported by someone called an accompanier who is a conduit between them and any services they need,” Ms Wijeratne explained. “If, for instance, a family needs to get a child into school, the accompanier will help.”