ERBIL, Kurdistan of Iraq - Syria on Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Netherlands-based International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), seeking to train Syrian personnel, create a central database, and facilitate regional and international cooperation to find missing Syrian persons, as the whereabouts of thousands remain unknown.

“The memorandum affirmed both parties' commitment to exchanging expertise and knowledge, and developing national capacities in the fields of criminal investigations, database management, forensic medicine, and genetic analysis, in addition to supporting outreach programs with families of the missing and enabling them to know their rights,” read a statement from Syria’s National Authority for the Missing.

The MoU includes training the authority’s personnel in search, investigation, and identification methods based on international practices. Additionally, the ICMP is to establish a national database with secure access to data previously collected by the commission. The agreement will also allow Syrian experts to benefit from ICMP’s advanced DNA and forensic expertise.

More than 100,000 Syrians went missing during the country’s civil war, according to recent figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). The UN body has also documented at least 97 people who have been abducted since the start of the year.

ICMP has a centralized data repository that has collected reports on almost 23,000 missing Syrians, collected from almost 60,000 family members. “The repository is growing steadily as more and more families provide information,” according to the commission.

Besides violent outbreaks in the country causing disappearances and kidnappings, many have fled Syria in search of a better life abroad, some of whom have been declared missing.

An example in recent months is the violence in the country’s Alawite-majority western coastal regions in March, when armed groups, many loyal to the ousted president Bashar al-Assad, an Alawite himself, attacked forces allied with the new government, prompting a military response from Damascus. 

At least 1,700 people, mostly Alawite civilians, were killed in the attacks, with many deaths attributed to the Syrian government and its allied forces, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

“In Syria itself, there are persons missing as a consequence of summary executions, arbitrary and incommunicado detention, kidnapping and abduction, as well as combatants and civilians missing as a direct result of fighting and the day-to-day ravages of war, and war crimes,” the ICMP said. 

“Since March 2011, more than 6.5 million people have been displaced inside the country, and a further 5.6 million have fled Syria, seeking safety in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Europe and further afield, according to UNHCR data from 2018. This means that relatives of the missing may be living inside or outside of Syria,” it added.

Another part of the MoU is facilitating regional and international cooperation to find missing persons and unidentified remains.

“The memorandum represents a key step toward developing a national environment based on international standards for determining the fate of the missing, strengthening the principle of accountability, and consolidating cooperation between the National Authority and specialized international partners,” the statement added.

Earlier this month, the authority also signed a joint declaration with ICMP, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and the Independent Institution on Missing Persons in Syria (IIMP) to cooperate on finding missing people in the country.