Sabina Aliyeva calls on the international community to step up efforts to determine the fate of missing persons
Azerbaijan's Commissioner for Human Rights Sabina Aliyeva (Ombudsman) has issued a statement in connection with August 30 — the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances.
As 1news.az reports, the statement says that determining the fate of persons who went missing as a result of conflicts, and ensuring the right of their families and society as a whole to know the truth, is one of the fundamental requirements of international law.
It is noted that the UN established August 30 — the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances — with the aim of drawing the attention of the world community to this problem, and of honoring the memory of thousands of missing persons, unidentified persons who died in wartime conditions and during military operations, and persons detained and held in secret places or secretly killed:
"The 1949 Geneva Conventions on the protection of victims of war, their Additional Protocols and the UN International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance enshrine the obligation of states to take effective measures to investigate the fate of missing persons, to ensure families' access to information and to establish the truth. Locating the remains of the deceased and their dignified burial, ensuring the right of families to learn the truth and informing society about the events that took place is an integral part of international humanitarian law."
The statement notes that for Azerbaijan, which for many years faced the grave consequences of armed conflicts, the issue of missing persons remains relevant today as well: "The aggressive policy against our country, which continued for more than 30 years, as well as the First and Second Karabakh Wars, led to thousands of families being deprived of the right to obtain information about the fate of their missing loved ones, and this uncertainty has for many years been the cause of their moral, psychological and social suffering.
According to official data of Azerbaijan's State Commission on Prisoners of War, Missing Persons and Hostages, as a result of the First Karabakh War more than 4,000 citizens of Azerbaijan were registered as missing persons. As a result of systematic search activities, exhumations, forensic medical examinations and identification measures carried out by the state at 32 mass graves discovered in the liberated territories after the Second Karabakh War and the local anti-terror operation, the identities of 328 people among the human remains found were established through DNA and forensic medical examination, the remains of 250 people were handed over to families and buried, and work in this direction is currently continuing."
The statement emphasizes that, despite the conclusion of the aforementioned armed conflicts and the measures taken to establish peace between the two states, the fact that the fate of 3,682 people (citizens of Azerbaijan) still remains unknown once again proves that international humanitarian cooperation must be strengthened through more practical, prompt and result-oriented measures: "Over time, the loss or deterioration of material evidence, the decrease in the number of witnesses and the limited nature of information complicate the process of clarifying the fate of missing persons.
According to the Ombudsman, taking into account the ongoing peace agenda in the region, in order to resolve this humanitarian problem, international humanitarian institutions within the framework of their mandates, and the states that were parties to the conflict within the framework of the obligations they assumed under international law, must step up their efforts to exchange information on mass graves, expand cooperation in the field of DNA and forensic medical examination, and determine the fate of missing persons.
"I call on international and regional organizations operating in the field of human rights, and on national human rights institutions, to show particular sensitivity to this issue, which is a humanitarian obligation of states under international humanitarian law, to intensify efforts to determine the fate of missing persons and to engage in joint cooperation aimed at achieving practical results," the statement says.
