On Tuesday, February 14, a Vietnamese delegation formally handed over 100 degraded bone samples of unidentified persons from the U.S.-Vietnam War to the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) in The Hague. The delegation consisted of members from Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of National Defense, Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, Academy of Science and Technology, and the Vietnamese Ambassador to the Netherlands. This event launched the USAID-funded pilot initiative to use ICMP’s expertise in cutting edge DNA technology to help Vietnam identify human remains.
The Vietnamese government estimates that there are between 200,000 and 1 million unidentified persons from the war. With such a large number of missing persons, this new technology is one of the only practical means to bring closure and peace to hundreds of thousands Vietnamese families who have waited over 50 years to recover their loved ones.