Numbers Continue Rising Six Years after Security Council Adopted Resolution 2474 (2019) on Missing Persons in Armed Conflict, Speakers Warn, Urging Action to Implement Text

As the Security Council met today to consider the issue of persons reported missing in armed conflict, speakers — including a woman whose father was abducted during the Korean War and a father whose son’s remains have yet to be returned from the one in Gaza — illustrated that the number of such persons has only continued to increase since the adoption of a resolution on this matter almost six years ago.

“In 2024 alone, the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] registered 56,000 new cases of missing persons,” said Khaled Khiari, Assistant Secretary-General for the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific in the Departments of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations. International humanitarian law, he said, prohibits forced disappearance and requires parties to conflict to take all feasible measures to account for those reported missing, while also enshrining their families’ right to information about their fate.

Nevertheless, he stated that ongoing hostilities between Israel and Palestinian armed groups “continue to generate grave concerns” under resolution 2474 (2019).  While welcoming the recent release of Edan Alexander as a “source of hope”, he pointed out that an estimated 58 Israeli hostages — 35 of them presumed dead — remain unaccounted for in Gaza.  “Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians — including children — also remain missing,” he said, adding that Israel continues to withhold the remains of deceased Palestinians, hindering families’ access to information and closure.

He also detailed the plight of Ukrainian civilians detained in areas under Russian Federation occupation and individuals missing in Myanmar; encouraged the repatriation of remains from the Korean War; and spotlighted the missing-persons crisis in Syria as a “tragically defining feature” of that conflict.  “Disappearances of loved ones create long-term trauma on families and communities,” he underscored, spotlighting the importance of respect for international law to the search for missing persons.  He concluded:  “Resolution 2474 (2019) must be fully implemented, with urgency.”

Korean War Abductees First, Largest Case of Enforced Disappearance

Next, Sung Eui Lee, Chief Director of the Korean War Abductees’ Family Union, said that she has been waiting for 75 years “for my father to come back”.  Her father, who was a 42-year-old attorney at the time, was taken to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea during the Korean War.  She was only 18 months old at the time, “having no memory of him”.  Yet, despite the “clear evidence”, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea never admitted to the “abduction crime”, she said.

This crime, she stressed, is ongoing — “the first and largest case of enforced disappearance” — and involves almost 100,000 victims.  If this case was properly resolved when it occurred, subsequent crimes committed in many other countries — such as Japan, Thailand and Romania — could have been prevented.  “This”, she underscored, “is why the issue of Korean War abductees must be resolved first”, as it is the key to resolving the cases that followed.

“Please let the DPRK confirm the life and death and repatriate the victims of war even if they have passed away,” she urged the Council, underlining the need to hold those responsible accountable.  “Time is running short — many of the siblings and spouses of the abductees have already passed away,” she continued, calling on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to confirm the state of missing loved ones.  “I sincerely believe that the Security Council will be at the front and take [up] this issue to resolve,” she added.

Hostages’ Families Urge Creation of Dedicated UN Mandate-Holder to Address Issue

Ruby Chen — the father of Itay Chen, a hostage still held in Gaza — then urged the Council to demand that Hamas release the deceased hostages in their possession.  Resolution 2474 (2019) must not remain symbolic — it must be enforced.  He pointed out that, despite that resolution, there is no specific mandate within the United Nations dedicated to addressing hostage-taking as a distinct violation of international law.

“This omission leaves families like us without a focal point, without guidance and without adequate representation,” he said, calling on the Council and the Secretary-General to establish a dedicated UN mandate-holder tasked with monitoring the implementation of resolution 2474 (2019) and addressing the broader range of violations and harms associated with hostage-taking.  Such a mandate-holder would provide institutional leadership and coordinate international responses.

“We, the US hostage families, and the 54 other families with hostages in Gaza are collateral damage,” he said, adding:  “Yeah, collateral damage is the best thing I got in a conflict that has been going on for decades.  We want Itay back and his physical status — whatever it might be — does not make him any less of a hostage.”  He therefore requested Council support to enable “families of this tragic fate to have closure and then have, at least, the ability to move on to the next sad chapter in life”.

Council Members Urge Justice for Missing Persons

As the floor opened, the representative of the United States recalled that, six years ago, the Council spoke with one voice in the search for those reported missing and the return of those deceased.  Yet, parties to conflict have failed to comply, and she underscored that “the bereaved families feel this failure each day”.  Demanding that Hamas immediately release all its hostages, she added:  “This Council will be judged by what we do to bring them home.”

While joining others in welcoming the recent release of Edan Alexander, the representative of the United Kingdom similarly spotlighted the “many more families” who “continue to wait in agony”.  “No one should have to suffer this fate,” she said — “whether in Gaza or elsewhere in the world”.  Algeria’s representative, meanwhile, pointed out that, among the 56,000 missing persons recorded in 2024, 11,000 of them were in Gaza.  This small land alone, he said, “carried one fifth of the suffering of our world in one year”.

“We should not be looking at this as mere statistics,” stressed Slovenia’s representative, recalling the legacy of wars in the countries of the former Yugoslavia and the people who went missing during them.  “There are mothers still searching for their children, wives that are still preparing dinner for their husbands and sons — just in case they return,” she said.  The representative of Greece, Council President for May, spoke in his national capacity to agree that “these cases hardly constitute mere statistics, but individual stories of severe hardship and distress”.

This was a common theme.  “Missing persons are not just numbers,” stressed Pakistan’s representative: “They are fathers who never returned home, mothers separated from their children, young boys who disappeared in the dead of night and daughters whose fates were sealed in silence.”  Panama’s representative, stating that “the search for those that never returned remains an open wound”, noted that at least 100 people are still missing following the military invasion of his country in December 1989.

“An estimated 100,000 civilians were abducted by North Korea during the three-year-long conflict,” recalled the representative of the Republic of Korea.  He urged the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which “continued to abduct and detain a significant number of South Korean people and citizens of other countries, including Japan, up until recently”, to offer an apology, verify victims’ fates and ensure their safe and immediate return.  He also noted the success of the television programme Finding Dispersed Families, which helped to reunite 10,000 families separated since the Korean War.

Addressing Plight of Missing Persons Is a Shared Responsibility

While many speakers drew attention to these and other specific cases — including in Ukraine, Sudan, Haiti, Syria, Jammu and Kashmir, Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of the Congo — Somalia’s representative said that the plight of missing persons and their families is a humanitarian challenge that “transcends borders” and “touches us all”.  “It is our shared responsibility to uphold the dignity and rights of all those affected,” he stated.  “The anguish of missing persons’ families can perpetuate intergenerational trauma,” observed the representative of Sierra Leone.

“It is imperative that, in the pursuit of justice and lasting peace, cases of missing persons do not go unaddressed,” underscored Guyana’s representative, urging States both to ensure appropriate mechanisms are in place to allow families of the missing to register cases and to create databases to guide future search and recovery efforts.  Denmark’s representative called on military planners to “integrate management of the missing, prisoners of war and the dead into every combat operation”.

Focus on International Committee of the Red Cross’ Mandate

The representatives of Iraq and France were among those who recognized ICRC’s mandate regarding missing persons under the Geneva Conventions.  “We value the efforts of the ICRC to search for missing persons through assistance and technical cooperation as the international agency with the most expertise and efficiency in this regard,” said the former, who noted the thousands of Iraqis missing following military operations in the 1980s and 1990s.  The latter, meanwhile, voiced support for the ICRC’s role in facilitating confidence-building measures in negotiations and peace agreements.

China’s representative, observing that “as long as wars rage on, the tragedy of missing persons may recur”, said that addressing this issue requires a focus on conflict prevention and resolution.  Further, he urged targeted assistance to affected countries to strengthen national capacities to search for, identify and locate missing persons.  “We must recognize that these issues are resolved most effectively when they do not have excessive political attention,” said the representative of the Russian Federation, warning against using “the issue of the missing as a tool of political pressure”.

While the representative of Cyprus said that Türkiye failed to take measures to prevent persons from going missing during its “illegal invasion” in 1974 — and to this day, refuses to account for these individuals — the latter country’s representative stressed that the fate of missing persons in Cyprus “should not be politicized, nor should it be presented as an issue which only affects Greek-Cyprus”.  Israel’s representative, spotlighting the “moral obligation to return the dead to their families”, stressed that this is not a political principle or a Western norm — it is a universal duty, shared by every nation, rooted in every religion and “engraved into the conscience of every human being”.

Urging that the missing not be forgotten, Kuwait’s representative called for the designation of a high-level UN official to follow-up on the expanded process of identifying the remains of all such persons.  As Kuwait continues to search for the remains of 308 missing persons, he said this “deep wound” has yet to heal.  “They are lost in the darkness,” he said.