The issue of the missing persons of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is among the priorities of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the group’s 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.
She said the second important area of the ICRC’s efforts 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 those efforts.
“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.
Amatuni added that the ICRC does not directly deal with the identification of bodies and the search for missing persons.
“For more than 30 years, we [the ICRC] have been dealing with matters related to the conflict in various directions. The relatives of the missing have the right to know what happened to their loved ones. In this regard, the ICRC works with the competent authorities, assists with its technical and expert capabilities, using also the knowledge acquired in other conflict situations,” said Amatuni.
Relatives should be given the most thorough information about their missing persons. Amatuni noted that the regional delegations of the ICRC have collected data on more than 5,000 persons who have gone missing as a result of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in the early 1990s. About 1,000 of them are Armenians, and the information about them was collected by the ICRC Yerevan delegation and the Nagorno-Karabakh mission—this mission, however, has stopped its activities.
“They are the people whom their relatives consider missing,” added Amatuni.
In connection with the fact that a number of relatives refuse to accept the results of the DNA tests carried out by Armenian state bodies, the ICRC representative noted that this organization tries to help clarify the circumstances according to which these relatives do not accept the DNA test results. Amatuni emphasized that the ICRC does not deal with identification.
“It is the work of the respective organizations of the state. The ICRC’s assistance is to share experience; we closely cooperate with the national center of expertise,” Amatuni said, and added that increasing the capacity of Armenian specialists will contribute to reducing the number of missing persons in case of any emergency.
“The ICRC supports the families of the missing as well. The second phase of this project was launched in 2022 and will be extended to the families of persons who went missing during the escalation of the conflict in 2020. The meeting of various needs is emphasized—social, socio-psychological—taking into account the peculiarity of the condition of those people who live between hope and despair. It is also necessary to remember that in most cases it is about the absence of a breadwinner,” stressed Zara Amatuni, and noted the importance of contact with the families of the missing.
“The ICRC itself is not engaged in the search for missing persons, acting as a neutral intermediary. Informing is also the duty of the state,” the ICRC representative said.
