 Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you for the to the organizers for putting up such a great event It would be of course much nicer to see you all personally But it's really nice to be able to share and talk about research in this format as well and I will be talking today about missing migrants and I will use my ten minutes to bring over two points From my research and thoughts that I have on missing migrants So I will start off talking about the risks of using a term That is not defined in a very wide way and secondly I will touch upon the accountability gap that Missing migrants are faced with and so as we all know migrants Migrants going missing is not a new phenomenon They always always people migrating went missing. However, during the last decade The challenge has increased and that has also Met with many new initiatives made by the main stakeholders in the field So the ICRC has put up a many initiative and specifically at missing migrants with the first conference in 2013 The ION has run a missing migrant program since 2014 The ICMP which is an organization dedicated especially to missing person runs a missing migrant program since 2018 and in the same year the global compact for safe orderly and regular migration included an objective specifically for missing migrants so the term as we can see is is really widely used and Why would we look at how those organizations and documents and reports and other NGOs use the term Missing migrant we will see that it actually applies to often to different groups of persons and that is the first risk I will talk about you too that I wanted to to raise so Using this term can lead to the misconception that the same subject is debated where the difference between the programs and documents for is is is really enormous for example The IOM missing migrant program is a program that is aimed at tracking fatalities So it's only at those that have died or disappeared by crossing an international border, which is an additional Limitation as we as we know and secondly, there is there are some very important exceptions So no deaths or disappearances that happen in refugee housing or centers are included in the count and Nor are debts or disappearances after deportations And so the numbers included in the IOM programs will be a very different from numbers Given by other actors who include a bigger number of Missing migrants at the same time. It also has very practical Implications because if we consider as missing migrants though it has those that have died on the ways Then the way that missing migrants will be addressed is by Exhumations, identifications, DNA programs or communicating to families about fatalities and those Ways to address missing migrants will not be relevant for missing migrants that are in immigration Detention centers and are not able to communicate with their families or are missing for other reasons The second risks that I would argue that using this term So why brings is that it encompasses person that are persons that are actually Protected additionally protected by international law and by using the wider term of to with regards to all of them It can blur the obligations that state parties have in two particular Persons and that brings me to to the second point that I wanted to raise today so to the accountability gap with regard to searching for missing migrants and to communicating with their families Migrants go missing for various different ways most of the time we've heard about migrants that went missing due to drownings on sea Some go missing due to armed conflict Some are forcibly disappeared a summer unable to establish contact with families and here The inability can also be caused by very different various different reasons So they can be in a detention center where communication is not made possible or they can be just technical impossibilities to get in touch with their families due to again different reasons Some migrants and this is of course a very limited group just chooses not to get in touch with their families and Because of that are still considered missing so the circumstances why particular migrants become missing Trigger different legal frameworks and as such different Laws have been raised by academics researchers and also by the stakeholders that I've mentioned before We're very often IHL human rights law of course law of the sea anti smuggling regulations currently often positive obligations in various different contexts most of the time however those consider a migrants death and regulating Migration and they they do not Most of those frameworks do not have any specific regulations concerning Obligation to search for a missing person and to inform the families about the search such obligation arise only in two frameworks in IHL and human rights law and as such the organizations that have Project aimed at missing migrants raised obligations Precisely with regard to missing persons and forcibly disappeared person when we look at who is considered a missing person or forcibly Disappear person we will see that only a very Limited number of missing migrants will be considered one of the two so raising those frameworks with which in fact Contain obligations that are very relevant for missing migrants will not be applicable So just to show you that shortly missing persons and IHL is not a design term however treating all applies to those that went missing due to armed conflict and Additional protocol to which has the most specific provisions and those obligations arise With regard to persons that were reported by an adverse party and as we can imagine it's practically very Unlikely that an adverse party will report a migrant that went missing even if it's connected to an armed conflict and The framework on it first is appearances which has even more specific obligations Concerning the search and informing the families in particular families need to be informed not only about the fate of the person But also about the progress of the investigation Who applies to those that were disappeared in the context of a deprivation of liberty Which has to be connected to a state and was followed by refusal to acknowledge or conceal the fate of the of the missing person of Disappear person and some missing migrants will in fact be considered for enforced disappeared persons and The framework that was established and is enforced applies also to after The person was released so as long as all the circumstances of the disappearance were not revealed Those provisions can be raised And then we'll apply for example to those missing migrants or those migrants that at some point were victims of secret detention for example secret immigration detention and and As you can see my argument is that under state That state obligation under international law arise depending on the very circumstances Of the missing and not on being a missing migrant per se And treating them as one group can blur those obligations and let me use my last minute or last one and a half minute To show that on the basis of one example So in the global compact for safe orderly and regular regulation There's one objective and specifically at missing persons It's called saving lives and established coordinating international effort on missing persons and missing migrants And it starts the paragraph starts with two sentences in the first sentence the states commit to saving life and preventing migrant death and here I quote in accordance with international law and then the second sentence starts we further commit To identify missing and dead and to facilitate communication with family so this implies that there is an obligation under international law to save lives and prevent migrant death and Adjust the further commitment not in accordance with international law to identify and to facilitate communication with families Which I would argue is not is not the fact because if the migrant is a forcibly disappeared person Then there is a clear international obligation both with regard to the identification and to the Facilitated information to the families and it's not a further commitment that states can or Cannot do and the same is true for persons that went missing due to an armed conflict here again The states are responsible to communicate to the families So and from from the other hand the obligation to Safe lives has also been tackled by various researchers and there is a valid argument That there is a policy fully compliant with international law can't tolerate large scale migrants death at sea and as such those two sentences are in my Opinion blurring can blur the obligations of state that depend on the circumstances of the missing more than on missing migrants Thank you