Report: Coordinating the Search and Criminal Investigations concerning Disappeared Persons. International Expert Working Meeting. 27-28 February 2020, Basel, Switzerland.

The meeting in Basel was convened to follow-up on the discussions and conclusions that had emerged at a previous International Expert Working Meeting, co-organized by swisspeace and the Missing Persons Project of the ICRC, held in Jordan on 3 and 4 September 2019 on the subject of the search for missing persons, including victims of enforced disappearance. That meeting revolved around the Guiding Principles for the Search for Disappeared Persons (the Guiding Principles) adopted by the CED on 16 April 2019. On that occasion, participants agreed that the relationship and coordination between the search and criminal investigations needed further analysis and clarification, with the aim to identify existing challenges, shared characteristics, good practices and lessons learned. In view of the importance of the issue, swisspeace decided to focus its activities on this subject and convened the meeting in Basel with three main objectives:
1. Analyze where tensions between the search and criminal investigations on enforced disappearance lie in practice;
2. determine how the coordination between the two can be enhanced in practice; and
3. reflect on possibilities to establish a process to jointly develop further guidance on the subject.

This report aims at capturing the tenor of the discussions, at summarizing the substantive exchanges among the participants and at presenting the main conclusions and the next steps discussed.