A/HRC/16/70 92. According to ICRC, the procedures of forensic recovery and post-mortem examination of human remains should respect the following principles: (a) at all times, the dignity, honour, reputation and privacy of the deceased must be respected; (b) the known religious beliefs and opinions of the deceased and his or her relatives should be taken into consideration; (c) families should be kept informed of decisions in relation to recovery and post-mortem examinations, and of the results of any such examination; (d) after postmortem examination, the remains should be released to the family at the earliest time possible; (e) it is essential that all information required for the search for and identification of the remains, including ante-mortem and post-mortem data, be adequately collected and properly managed, including with the necessary professional advice, legal and ethical provisions, and with the support of appropriate databases and software where necessary.23 93. Any forensic work on missing persons should be based on standards of forensic best practice (legal, ethical, scientific and technical) and conducted with the primary aim of identifying victims and returning their remains to their families. Direct contacts should be established between forensic teams and the relatives of the missing persons. 94. The case of Cyprus, where ICRC offered advice and support in establishing a sustainable all-Cypriot team of forensic scientists, may be regarded as a model of best practice. The Cypriot forensic team, comprising Greek and Turkish Cypriot forensic practitioners, works with the families of missing persons and integrates different disciplines, including archaeology, anthropology and genetics.24 95. The International Commission on Missing Persons, an independent and impartial organization established in 1996 to support the Dayton Peace Agreement, and headquartered in Sarajevo, pioneered the use of DNA technology to identify large numbers of missing persons. By matching DNA from blood and bone samples, the Commission has helped identify 18,000 missing persons; today, its database houses 150,000 genetic samples relative to missing persons in more than 20 countries. Techniques developed by the Commission in the Western Balkans have revolutionized the search for missing persons in other countries, and Commission experts are now assisting the Governments of Chile, Colombia, Iraq and the Philippines, and provide assistance to Kuwait, Norway, South Africa and Thailand. The effective use of DNA as a means of mass identification has transformed the Commission from a small organization operating on an essentially political level into the world’s largest identification programme that currently operates the world’s biggest high-throughput DNA human identification facility.25 96. Competent authorities must adopt adequate procedures for providing information on the identity, location and cause of death to the appropriate authorities and to families. In particular, information on deceased persons and the location of human remains and graves should be centralized and transmitted to the other party to the conflict. 97. The authorities must ensure that the dead, including burials, are recorded, as well as information on graves and the persons interred in them. This task might be entrusted to the State’s official graves registration service; if not, it would require the establishment and functioning of a complementary system to record the details of death and internment of protected persons. 23 24 25 18 See ICRC, Guiding Principles/Model Law on the Missing. “Missing persons: a major humanitarian concern”, interview with ICRC forensic doctor Morris Tidball-Binz, available from www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/interview/missing-interview280908.htm. See www.ic-mp.org.