UN strives to work with new Syrian government to determine the fate of the missing
UNITED NATIONS: The head of a UN body established to determine what happened to potentially hundreds of thousands of people missing in Syria said Wednesday it was essential to find a way to work together with a new Syrian commission.
Assistant Secretary-General Karla Quintana said the Independent Institution on Missing Persons in Syria, established in 2023, was only able to enter the country in January, a month after the overthrow of President Bashar Assad, whose family had ruled Syria for more than 50 years.
Quintana said the most important challenge now was to coordinate with the Syrian Commission on Missing Persons, established in May by the transitional government.
Before Assad’s ouster, 130,000 people were estimated to be missing in Syria. But the Syrian commission’s head, Mohammed Reda Jalkhi, said in August that estimates ranged from 120,000 to 300,000 and there “could be more.”
