28/11/2025 Migration, International Protection and Economic Co-operation
PACE and the Grand National Assembly of Türkiye co-organised a parliamentary roundtable on “The role of public policy to prevent and address disappearances of migrants”. The event, bringing together more than 80 participants, launched the recently published toolkit for parliamentarians on this issue, available in English, French and Turkish.
Yıldırım Tuğrul Türkeş, Chairperson of the Turkish delegation to PACE emphasised that “solidarity, shared responsibility, and principled leadership anchored in our common values” were key to tackle this humanitarian challenge. Participants noted that ensuring clarity, closure, and dignity for families of missing migrants was only possible through improving cross-border co-operation on data collection, as well as search and identification procedures.
During the first panel, moderated by Meryem Göka (Türkiye, NR), the Turkish Presidency of Migration Management and Pelin Yılık (Türkiye, NR), underlined the importance of protective and rights-based migration policies to prevent disappearances. Representatives from the Turkish Red Crescent and from the Institute of Forensic Medicine and Forensic Sciences in Madrid presented the challenges encountered in resolving cases of missing migrants, whether deceased or alive.
The roundtable provided an opportunity to present the toolkit and to stress the underlying core element enshrined in Resolution 2569 (2024), namely that human dignity must be upheld in life and in death, regardless of a person’s origin, administrative status, or the circumstances of their disappearance or death. The ICRC, elaborated further on the concrete actions for parliamentarians to undertake on this issue. It emphasised the crucial need to involve families for process to be effective. Serap Yaşar, former PACE rapporteur (Türkiye, NR) on “Missing refugee and migrant children in Europe”, elaborated on the factors of vulnerability specific to children and turning-18s in migration.