By Jhr. Mr. Alexander W. Beelaerts van Blokland, Justice (Judge) in the (Dutch) Court of Appeal and honorary Special Advisor International Affairs of the City of The Hague.
The City of The Hague hosts hundreds of international organizations. Big ones as well as smaller or even very small ones. Most of them are active in the fields of peace and justice, but not all of them. Several are at least in some way related to peace and justice. In this year 2015 a new one will come: the International Commission for Missing Persons (ICMP) with about 180 employees will move in the next three years from Sarajevo in Bosnia Herzegovina in the former Yugoslavia to The Hague.
ICMP has been an initiative of former President Bill Clinton of the USA, launched by him at the G7 Summit in Lyon, France, in 1996. In the Yugoslavia War (1991-1995) about 40.000 people were missing. But the problems are much bigger. No one knows exactly of course, but people think that all together many, perhaps even hundreds of millions of people are missing all over the world. Not only in war zones but also as a result of violations of human rights, disasters, kidnapping and organised crimes. Only in the Iraq of Saddam Hussein 250.000 to one million persons were missing.
ICMP is active in about forty countries with a huge number of missing people. The headquarters of the organization will move to The Hague because of the many related international organizations that are established there and more in particular because of NFI, the Dutch Forensic Institute, an organization world wide well known because of its outstanding record in the field of forensic work. That of course is most important when dead bodies are found and have to be identified, as well as to find things that can be related to the murderers, who will have to be brought to justice.
The Hague is proud that ICMP has chosen us. We will welcome ICMP Director General Kathryne Bomberger and her staff and employees with open arms and wish ICMP a very good future and the people who work there a very nice period in The Hague.
