Fyears ago, the remains of a young child wrapped in a life jacket and a wetsuit washed up on a beach in southern Norway, having been washed away by the waves for the past two months of the North Sea. Although his face was not recognised, publicity about the sinking of the boat he was traveling on, and doubts about his identity, enabled the Norwegian police to find a relative whose DNA his that can be compared to him, he gave this lonely body with a name: Artin Iran Nezhad.
Others remain nameless. Of the tens of thousands who die trying to reach Europe, only about a fifth are officially known. For relatives, this lack of closure is an ongoing trauma. However, a newly formed network of forensics scientists is trying to change this, with the development of new technologies and processes to aid identification efforts.
Established in November last year, the Migrant Disaster Victim Identification (MDVI) Action brings together expertise from across Europe to tackle what its chair, Prof Caroline Wilkinson of Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), describes as The growing humanitarian crisis of unidentified dead migrants in Europe. .
Wilkinson said: “At least 25,000 people are thought to have died in the last 10 years crossing the Mediterranean alone, and this does not account for those who die on land and on other roads.” “Only 25% of them have ever been officially identified – and that’s the only place where the bodies are found. There will be thousands more bodies that haven’t been cleared from those migrant disasters.”
Although there is no official record of how many people have died trying to cross the Channel, a recent report by OpenDemocracy estimated that at least 391 people died between 1999 and 2023, while the International Federation of Phallo (IOM) has announced 2024 that In the deadliest year, at least 57 people died in the Channel between January and October.
However, such numbers are “low estimates, especially because in offshore areas, there is a high probability of boats disappearing”, said Julia Black, of IOM’s Missing Migrants Project. In fact, if they go missing, only the families know that they have disappeared.
While it’s rare for bodies to wash up on UK shores, “sometimes they do, and the French authorities have played a role,” said Det Supt Jon Marsden, identification co-ordinator for the people affected by disasters in the UK. “If you’re close to the event, hopefully you’ll recover the body that’s still there, but if the time had lasted, you could end up with organs or bones that need to be recognized and repatriated, where possible. It’s a very difficult, very complicated job.”
Another issue is that, unlike other disasters, people often do not have passports or other forms of identification that would give investigators strong clues about who they are. Another is the reluctance of friends or family members to contact authorities in countries where they suspect their loved one has disappeared, despite their curiosity.
Research carried out by the IOM found that existing systems for dealing with missing persons inquiries in the UK were not sufficiently inclusive to support the needs of such families. Interviews with UK searchers en route to the UK suggested that fear about their immigration status was another common factor.
“I was really impressed by one interviewee who said, ‘You can’t really look for someone else, you have to hide,'” said Black.
Until recently, countries have been reluctant to treat migrant deaths as disaster victim identification (DVI) events, meaning that certain forensic methods may not be followed and accurate data collection may not occur. “If it’s a DVI incident, countries can also ask for help from Interpol and other member states, which leads to more resources,” said Wilkinson. “If it is not a DVI event, the investigation can often be considered a crime, which has negative consequences for any survivors, support groups or victims’ families.”
However, over the past two years, immigration-related discussions within Interpol’s DVI task force have increased. According to Marsden, its vice chairman, their main goal is to coordinate and support programs like Wilkinson’s.
MDVI Action is committed to improving Europe’s capacity to deal with the thousands of deaths on its borders, by building research partnerships and increasing the number of people with expertise to help with such identification.
One of its initiatives is to explore the use of “secondary identifiers”, such as a person’s facial features, birthmarks, tattoos or piercings, as a legal means of identification. Although such features are used informally, dental records, DNA and fingerprints are the only legally accepted identifiers. However distrust of authorities means that family members may be unwilling to provide DNA samples for comparison with unidentified human remains, while fingerprint and dental records for The missing person may not be there.
Often the most readily available are photos of the missing person – possibly taken on their travels – that they may have posted on social media. In August, Wilkinson and his colleagues published a study in which postmortem images of 29 identified dead migrants were compared to an archive of images taken while these people were alive. Following the protocol they had done before, the researchers examined different parts of the face to see if they could match the deceased with the correct living person. The overall accuracy rate was 85%.
Another collaboration that has grown from the MDVI project is the development of hand-held scanners that first responders or relief workers can use to record parts of dead migrants, before more damage occurs. , enhancing the chances of successful identification. “The magic of 3D is that once the picture is taken, you can change the angles, the lighting and create different objects that can make the face appear to someone who knows the person, whereas a 2D photo. [of the deceased] could be more problematic, said Dr. Frederic Bezombes of LJMU, who is developing the scanners.
Some newly developed technologies can be used to aid the recovery of people who die at sea. Speaking at MDVI Action’s first annual conference in September, Dr Tomasz Dabrowski at the Marine Institute in Galway, Ireland, described software he developed that combined ocean tide predictions with models of how different particles behave. presence or absence of spirit. predict where bodies or survivors of sea accidents might wash up. It is already being used by Irish authorities to aid their investigations.
“First, you would have had to ask a local expert who knows how ocean currents and tides work and how they interact with wind and atmospheric pressure in a particular area,” Dabrowski said. to predict the identity of a lost boat or person.”
Although this technology is not supported by the MDVI project, and has not yet been used in the UK or in UK or French migrant rescue operations, Dabrowski says it has the potential, as the example covered the west in Scotland, the Irish Sea, the Channel and the French Atlantic Coast.
Research into such methods is just beginning, and more will be needed to confirm its validity, but the moral case for naming the thousands who perish trying to reach Europe or the UK is enormous. .
“Actually, this work is about the people left behind. “They can’t grieve properly until they get the answers they deserve about their loved one,” said Marsden. “No matter how big or small their part of the return is, it is important that they do so. That’s why we’re doing this work, so we can help close that chapter for them and allow them to somehow move on.”
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