"The problem of missing people is too often marginalised or forgotten in Europe": in the run-up to the World Day of Missing People (30th August), the Council of Europe takes position through the president of the Parliamentary Assembly, René van der Linden. A solution to such phenomenon, which concerns dozens of thousands of people in the old continent, "is essential in terms of human rights and humanitarian law, but it is too often hindered by political conflicts, used as an excuse to prevent any search". "Uncertainty about the fate of these people", explains the Dutch politician from Strasbourg, "devastates the life of too many families". The causes at the source of this problem are many and include the different conflicts that "over the last decades have taken place on the soil of Europe": in Cyprus in the Seventies, in the Balkans in the Nineties, as well as in the Caucasian region, in Karabakh, in Abkhazia and Ossetia. The Special Day "must remind us states van der Linden that these people’s families must be supported in the search of the truth about the fate of their relatives". In addition, it is an opportunity "to encourage the small and few NGOs", which, alongside the Red Cross and the International Commission for Missing People (Icmp), "keep attracting attention" to this problem.
