A DNA-led Process to Account for Missing Persons from the War in Ukraine
Matthew Holliday, ICMP Europe Director and Head of the Ukraine Program
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“A Country of Missing People: Securing Justice and Truth for Families of the Missing in Ukraine”, published by the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) at the end of August, reviews the steps that Ukraine is taking to account for tens of thousands of missing and disappeared persons as a result of the Russian invasion. Among other things, the book examines how Ukraine can integrate DNA profiling in an effective system to identify victims of forcible deportation, summary execution, incommunicado detention, kidnapping, and family separation, including unlawful adoptions and human trafficking.
An ICMP program, requested by the Ukrainian authorities and supported by the European Union, the US, Canada and Germany, envisages campaigns to collect data from up to 90,000 families of the missing inside Ukraine and among the country’s huge diaspora. ICMP’s DNA laboratories in The Hague are assisting Ukrainian forensic scientists in the DNA profiling process, and Ukrainians can already report missing persons using ICMP’s Online Inquiry Center.
“A Country of Missing People” notes that Ukraine’s pre-war DNA laboratory network, with nine Ministry of Internal Affairs labs spread across the country, was staffed by well-trained personnel and had adequate resources to handle peacetime demands. However, the conflict has created demand that goes well beyond the capacity of the peacetime system. In October last year, for example, the DNA laboratory in Kharkiv was receiving 20 cases a day from the recently liberated town of Izium, compared to five cases a month before the war.
Through its experience in the Western Balkans and elsewhere, ICMP has been able to demonstrate that advances in genetic science, including recovering DNA from highly degraded bones and the practical application of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), are hugely effective when integrated with advances in database technology. Current, in-house developed software – ICMP’s Integrated Data Management System (iDMS) – allows information to be collected, protected, stored and shared, supporting identifications with extremely high levels of certainty (posterior probability of 99.95-percent, and often higher).
While some elements of a DNA-led identification system already exist in Ukraine, they haven’t been brought together. The default method of identification continues to be based on visual recognition and secondary identifiers – artefacts found at the gravesite, markings, tattoos and so on.
Developing an effective system will involve collecting DNA profiles from tens of thousands – perhaps hundreds of thousands – of relatives of missing people (to account for 30,000 missing people in the Western Balkans, ICMP collected samples from more than 100,000 relatives, not just in the region but throughout Europe, North America and Australia). When a comprehensive database of donor reference samples has been compiled, DNA taken from unidentified human remains can be compared in a manner that results in identifications. For this model of mass identification to function, all of the information gathered by different agencies – the military, the police, the various institutions established to account for missing persons – has to be brought together.
In May 2023, the Ministry of Internal Affairs launched the Unified Register on Persons gone Missing under Special Circumstances, which is a significant step towards developing a secure system for collecting and sharing information.
DNA-led identification has introduced a new element to the conduct of war crimes investigations. In the former Yugoslavia, the attempt by perpetrators to hide evidence of the Srebrenica massacre and other atrocities was part of a systematic campaign – that continued for decades – to seize the historical narrative and bend it to support political objectives by challenging the nature and the scale of civilian deaths. By presenting incontestable scientific evidence – the identification of victims – ICMP was able to refute genocide denial and support an accurate historical record. At the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), ICMP provided scientific evidence, DNA match reports and DNA case files (with the explicit permission of families) and expert witness testimony. The evidence presented by ICMP allowed prosecutors to identify the connection between geographically distant mass graves, which supported the charge that killings in Bosnia and Herzegovina had been part of a joint criminal enterprise.
The Ukrainian authorities have to ensure (with limited resources and in the most challenging circumstances, they are already trying to do this) that evidence from missing persons cases is collected and maintained in a manner acceptable to the courts, and that it will stand up to judicial scrutiny. Clandestine gravesites should therefore be treated as crime scenes and excavated remains and exhibits processed in line with international forensic standards.
Ukraine has an advanced administrative system but many of its key components work in relative isolation. Targeted and effective steps to coordinate and streamline competencies will reduce inefficiency and allow experts to work across ministerial mandates.
“A Country of Missing People” argues that Ukraine can account for tens of thousands of people if it coordinates the work of diverse agencies and establishes a system that includes legislative and administrative provisions, and an active program to engage civil society, including families of the missing. If such a system is established, then the latest developments in forensic science and database technology can be applied effectively.
About ICMP
ICMP is a treaty-based intergovernmental organization with Headquarters in The Hague, the Netherlands. Its mandate is to secure the co-operation of governments and other authorities in locating persons missing as a result of conflicts, human rights abuses, disasters, organized violence and other causes and to assist them in doing so.
ICMP was one of the organizations that helped to identify victims of Flight MH17, shot down by a Russian missile over eastern Ukraine en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in July 2014. It has recommended legislative and institutional measures to enhance Ukraine’s capacity to account for missing persons. Many of these recommendations had already been implemented before the 2022 Russian invasion. In April 2022, the authorities in Ukraine requested urgent ICMP assistance. ICMP deployed staff in the Spring of 2022, opened an office in Kyiv in July, and launched a comprehensive program to help the Ukrainian institutions account for those who are missing as a result of the Russian invasion.