Around 5000 missing persons, including 1000 Armenians, in Nagorno-Karabakh conflict since 1990s – ICRC

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 3, ARMENPRESS. The issue of the missing persons of the Karabakh conflict is among the priorities of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), ICRC Armenia Communications and Prevention Manager Zara Amatuni told Armenpress.

Amatuni was asked about the work as part of the ICRC functions in the direction of determining the fate of the missing persons.

“We have been dealing with this issue in relation to the Karabakh conflict in the region for over thirty years. This means we work in various directions. First of all, this is about the law guaranteed by the mandate pertaining not to ICRC obligations but to giving answers to the families of those missing by the authorities in relevant sides, as to what happened to their relatives in relation to the hostilities. This is the requirement of international humanitarian law. We are working in this direction with the authorities of the sides, in order to remind them about their obligations within the framework of the mandate, and to maximally support with our technical experience and certain skills that we have acquired during our work in similar situations,” Amatuni said.

Amatuni said the second important direction of the ICRC work is to provide maximally comprehensive and detailed information about each and every missing person.

“Based on the applications of the families, we collected through our offices in the region the data of around five thousand missing persons who are considered missing since the 90s, and subsequently as a result of escalations of the conflict from 2020 until 2023. Around 1000 of them are Armenians, whose data was collected by the ICRC through the offices in Yerevan and Karabakh. This number includes persons whose families consider them missing despite the existence of a positive DNA identification: there are families who do not accept the test results for various reasons. This is also a signal for us to work with authorities to try and determine the circumstances behind people not accepting these results,” Amatuni said, emphasizing that the ICRC does not independently carry out the identification process and the relevant authorities are in charge of it.

“We are mostly conveying our experience. For example, by closely cooperating with the laboratory of the forensic expertise center, our experts in Armenia try to increase capacity through equipment, lectures and exchange of experience, in order to maximally support the high-level professionalism in this sector, and in turn this will contribute to drastic decrease of disappearances in emergency situations,” Amatuni said.

Regarding the search process of those missing, Amatuni said the steps and decisions around it are up to the authorities, while the ICRC, as a neutral mediator, is ready to support.

“In our view, a certain humanitarian atmosphere must be created that would allow the sides to have relevant steps together, for example, map the possible locations of burials if the given case pertains to persons about whom some information is available. Naturally, we are always keeping this issue active, discussing it with the authorities and working with families, but the actions themselves and decisions are not up to us. We are ready to work with the sides as a neutral mediator,” Amatuni said.