In March 2020, days before COVID-19 put New York into lockdown, the UN Statistical Commission (UNSC) unanimously endorsed the world’s first International Recommendations on IDP Statistics.[1] These recommendations provide a framework to help countries to better define IDPs and to…
The COVID-19 pandemic has torn through lives and livelihoods across the globe. Forcibly displaced people are among the most vulnerable but there is little robust data to provide insights into how their needs are evolving through the pandemic.[1] Health considerations…
People trying to migrate to other countries drown in sewage canals; they freeze to death in remote forests; they die of dehydration and starvation after their vehicles break down in the middle of the desert. Documenting migrant deaths and disappearances…
Inherited and unchanging throughout life, DNA is a powerful metric for identifying human remains. Technical improvements in using it have advanced over the decades; however, ethical, administrative and bureaucratic barriers restrict its use, particularly for transnational identification. This is apparent…
Families of people who go missing on a migration journey either do not know how to seek government support or are sceptical of doing so, and States have done almost nothing to address this issue. There appears to be little…
Bereaved families have the right to truth, to justice and to closure. These fundamental rights are recognised under international human rights law, including under the right to dignity, the right to life and the right to family and private life.[1]…
The search for missing migrants is a transnational, even transcontinental, undertaking requiring cooperation among a broad range of actors.[1] A global intergovernmental framework for such cooperation had been lacking, but this changed with the inclusion (at ICRC’s instigation) of Objective…
Many migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean do not survive the journey. Others just disappear. With every migrant who goes missing, there is a family longing for closure. “There’s not an event or holiday where we don’t think of him.…
“There is no health without mental health.” UN Secretary-General António Guterres reaffirmed this simple but powerful message in May 2020.[1] In a timely effort to sound the alarm, he cautioned that a global upsurge in the prevalence and severity of…
We had not expected to be publishing yet another issue of FMR under COVID-19 restrictions – and to be welcoming new Co-Editor Alice Philip to the team without even being able to meet in person! But thanks to the collaboration…