This is a translation of an op-ed entitled ‘Organiseer identificatie rampen in EU centrum’, published in Dutch in De Volkskrant on July 15, 2015, see: http://www.volkskrant.nl/opinie/organiseer-identificatie-rampen-in-eu-centrum~a4100925/
Proposal to establish a new European Catastrophe Identification Center (CIC) By Victor Toom, July 15th, 2015
The images are etched in our memories: the planes over Eindhoven, the coffins, the motorcade, people along the roadside, toy animals and flowers at Amsterdam Airport. According to the famous philosopher Richard Rorty, solidarity is to be achieved by the “imaginative ability to see strange people as fellow sufferers.” After "MH17", the Netherlands displayed solidarity en masse.
Solidarity does not end after death; despite the horrific occasion the solidarity that was displayed with those who died in the tragedy of MH17 and those who were left behind can be qualified as ‘beautiful’ and ‘kindhearted’. But it is not neutral, it compels. It creates the room for the enormous efforts and investments required to ‘bring back home’ so many people. To identify them. To enable the goodbyes.
This week, we not only commemorate the MH17 tragedy. It is also the twentieth anniversary of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, which was the largest massacre in Europe since World War II. Among other responses to the genocide, the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) was established. In an epic operation, the ICMP has identified 7,000 of the 8,000 genocide victims, and on July 11, more than 130 newly identified Srebrenica victims were buried.
‘Srebrenica’, ‘MH17’, the recent Germanwings crash and the terrorist attacks in America, London and Madrid show how important it is for relatives as well as society to identify the dead, and to bury and commemorate them. But efforts to identify victims of other tragedies are rare. What about the tens, if not hundreds, of people who drown in the Mediterranean every day, the more than 6,000 dead people in the festering crisis in the Ukraine, and the wars in the Middle East with hundreds of thousands of victims. The cynical reality is that solidarity with those who died and their families, or the will to identify ‘the other’, ends at the borders of the European Union; where are the aircrafts, the coffins, the people along the road, toy animals and flowers for the victims of these mass fatality incidents? Where are the international forensic experts and emergency services to identify the dead, and to bury and commemorate them?
The problem with disaster victim identification is threefold. Mega-disasters are too rare, there are too many victims, and they are typically handled nationally. The identification of the victims of MH17 is an example of this three-fold problem: the Netherlands Forensic Institute and Dutch police agreed that 1
This is a translation of an op-ed entitled ‘Organiseer identificatie rampen in EU centrum’, published in Dutch in De Volkskrant on July 15, 2015, see: http://www.volkskrant.nl/opinie/organiseer-identificatie-rampen-in-eu-centrum~a4100925/
cases would not be submitted for forensic examination. While the former was trying to identify MH17 victims, criminal cases were delayed, and the last round of identification of MH17 victims took place in laboratories abroad.
To cope with such problems in the future, in the Netherlands and beyond, I propose to establish a new European approach to large-scale identification projects: to establish a European Catastrophe Identification Center (CIC). The CIC should organize expertise, infrastructure, competence, experience and forensic capacities centrally and the ICMP—and its experience and established laboratories—should have a significant role in this initiative. Participating countries maintain the CIC by paying a modest annual membership fee; they will receive and provide training, and recognize such an institution in a binding treaty.
The Netherlands is in the unique position to lay the foundations for such a European CIC. We have a leading role in human rights protection. The Hague is the international city of peace and security, and hosts among others the International Criminal Court and the ICMP headquarters. The Netherlands Forensic Institute is a leading forensic institute. The Dutch National Forensic Investigation Team (or LTFO) has proven to operate competently and empathetically. And the facilities in the Hilversum barracks, where much identification work for MH17 took place, have been qualified as excellent for large identification operations.
We commemorate this week two Dutch traumas: MH17 and Srebrenica. Commemoration is important, but we must also move forward. As Rorty states, solidarity is something that requires “increasing our sensitivity to the particular details of the pain and humiliation of other, unfamiliar sorts of people”. So let our national experiences, combined with available expertise, become the foundation for the newly established European CIC. The CIC should take the lead whenever future large-scale catastrophes occur, and in the absence of such mass human fatality incidents it should offer relief to recent and current tragedies beyond Europe.
Victor Toom is research fellow at Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne, and holds a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Research Fellowship. Contact details:
[email protected]
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