24/04/2025 Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons
“A structured dialogue between the various stakeholders is urgently needed, be they state or non-state actors. This situation is too serious for Resolution 2569 to remain a document in a drawer,” said PACE Vice-President Antonio Gutiérrez-Limones (Spain, SOC), opening a parliamentary conference on “Envisioning effective public policy to prevent and address cases of missing migrants”, which took place in Strasbourg on 23 and 24 April 2025.
More than 100 participants gathered for the conference, which was a follow-up to PACE Resolution 2569 on “Missing migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers – a call to clarify their fate”. As the first PACE text to address the issue of disappearances in the context of migration, the resolution calls for concrete policy measures to prevent disappearances, respond effectively to cases which come to light, and clarify the fate of missing migrants.
“International co-operation is key. No country can tackle it alone. This is where ‘the 46’ can play a key role,” said Council of Europe Director General of Human Rights & the Rule of Law Gianluca Esposito, adding that a new legal text in preparation by the Committee of Ministers to step up the fight against the smuggling of migrants could “address the problems of jurisdiction and of prosecutorial action”.
Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, strongly endorsed the idea of central focal points in each country: “This is critical – there needs to be a single gathering place for all of the necessary information so that those who need it, including family and loved ones, have somewhere to go.”
Emmanuel Fernandes (France, UEL), Second Vice-Chair of the PACE Migration Committee, underlined that "exchanges of views with those who know, whether public authorities, associations, judicial bodies or international bodies, is essential to identify areas of work that we, as parliamentarians, can pursue to promote public action".
Summarising the relevance of the Organisation in this context, Julian Pahlke (Germany, SOC), the Rapporteur for follow-up to Resolution 2569, said that “above all, what we need is the collective will of all member states of the Council of Europe. Families must have a contact point they can turn to, an institution they trust. We need to recognise the dignity of people on the move.”
The conference brought together PACE members with forensic practitioners, prosecutors, law enforcement officials, representatives of international organisations, key civil society actors and the families of people who have gone missing in the context of migration. Keynote speakers included the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants Gehad Madi, Julia Black of the IOM’s Missing Migrants Project, the President of the Italian NGO Comitato Tre Ottobre Tareke Brhane, and the Global Advocacy Lead of the ICRC’s Central Tracing Agency Florian von König.
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A toolkit for parliamentarians to take action on this issue will be released by the end of the 2025.
Videos from the speeches will be made available on the webpage on the conference.
