International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances is marked today. Miron Chigogidze, Deputy Director of the State Service of Veterans Affairs, laid a wreath the Memorial of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances located at Tamarashvili Street in Tbilisi. He once again offered his sympathy to the family members of the persons who went missing and expressed sorrow over the grief that accompanies the loss of a family member or a relative.
The event dedicated to this special day took place at the Memorial of Victims of Enforced Disappearancess which was organized and participated by the representatives of the Office of the State Minister of Georgia, the International Committee of the Red Cross, “Molodini” Foundation and family committees.
The event was also attended by the head of the administrative department of the State Service of Veterans Affairs, Natia Janashvili, chief of the regional management department, Levan Amiridze, and employees of the Service.
International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances was founded in 1981 in Costa Rica, Latin America. This day has been officially celebrated since 2003 in Georgia.
2049 military and civilian persons are considered missing in Georgia due to the armed conflicts in the 1990s and the 2008 Russo-Georgia War of August 2008. Their families didn’t have accurate information about the loved ones who were considered to be in an uncertain situation for many years. In 2010, with the involvement of the International Committee of the Red Cross, a total of 601 remains were found and 243 were returned to their families after the creation of two coordination mechanisms one of which operates in connection with the armed conflict in Abkhazia in 1992-1993, and the other in connection with the hostilities in the Tskhinvali region of the 1990s and 2008.
The humanitarian coordination mechanism continues to work continuously to identify the missing persons and return them to their families.
